A federal judge ruled last week that portions of a class action lawsuit alleging Comcast set out to establish a monopoly in the Philadelphia area can go to jury trial.

The decision is good news for Philadelphia-area cable TV customers who sued Comcast nine years ago in the class action lawsuit Behrend v. Comcast Corp. Consumers claim the alleged monopoly allowed Comcast to overcharge them nearly $875 million by keeping competition out of the market.

According to the Comcast monopoly class action lawsuit, the company violated antitrust laws by striking a series of deals with would-be competitors in which they “swapped” assets and customers so that each company would have “clusters” or markets. Those alleged deals gave Comcast monopoly power because it allowed its market share of Philadelphia subscribers to increase from 23.9% in 1998 to 77.8% by 2002, the class action lawsuit claims.

Federal Judge John R. Padova, Jr. ruled that the Philadelphia Comcast antitrust class action lawsuit can proceed to trial because consumers had “presented evidence from which a jury could find that Comcast had monopoly power” by buying Philadelphia-area cable companies that had previously competed with Comcast for local service franchises, thus reducing competition. Judge Padova also ruled consumers presented sufficient evidence that Comcast may have “acted with predation," which is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act, when it targeted special discounts to consumers of rival cable provider RCN in hopes of driving the company out of the market, and that Comcast’s conduct stopped RCN from expanding and offering more customers competitive service.

However, Judge Padova rejected the claim that Comcast broke the law simply by buying up competing local companies, since Comcast was able to prove that this created economic efficiencies and allowed it to offer new products and services. He also rejected the claim that Comcast wrongly stopped contractors from working for RCN, since RCN was able to find other contractors.

Similar class action lawsuits were filed on behalf of Comcast customers in the Boston and Chicago area markets, but those cases are pending the outcome of the Philadelphia case.