Plaintiff seeking $500 million from Comcast for alleged failure to block porn given time to amend complaint

A pro se litigant seeking $500 million from Comcast because the cable

company allegedly failed to permanently block pornography from his television has until April 14 to file an amended complaint, a judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab, sitting in the Western District of Pennsylvania, filed an order April 8 giving Aliquippa, Pa. resident Dale Lawrence Romig until next week to amend his lawsuit against Comcast to ensure the civil action complies with federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

As pled, the plaintiff’s complaint details a customer service dispute over which the court does not have jurisdiction, Schwab noted.

Federal district courts require “notice pleading,” as opposed to the heightened standard of “fact pleading,” the judge wrote.

Schwab stated that federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires only a “’short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,’ in order to ‘give the defendant fair notice of what the … claim is and the grounds on which it rests.’”

“As currently pled, Plaintiff’s factual averments are not sufficient to advance a federal claim,” the judge wrote.

While a federal court can dismiss a complaint sua sponte when appropriate under federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, Schwab gave the plaintiff until next Monday to file an amended complaint detailing his case.

In his original pro se civil action, Romig states that in January 2013, he requested that Comcast block all the pornography on his cable box.

A technician came out to his house on Feb. 1 of last year, the record shows, and made some adjustments to the cable box.

The technician allegedly informed the plaintiff that the pornography was now permanently blocked, although Romig claimed that something went wrong, and the adult entertainment only ended up being blocked for a 24-hour period.

“I suspect this negligence was intentional,” Romig wrote in his complaint.

 

The federal case number is 2:14-cv-00386-AJS.