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The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion, said third- party collection companies can recover long-distance telephone fees on behalf of payphone companies that have disputed charges owed by AT&T Inc. (T) and a unit of Sprint Nextel Corp. (S). "History and precedent make clear that such an assignee has long been permitted to bring suit," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority ruling. At issue in the case was whether federal law allows the third-parties aggregators to sue in federal court after being assigned the right to recover fees owed to payphone owners when a customer uses a toll-free number to place a long-distance call. The appeal involves six third-party companies that sued in 1999 to recover fees allegedly owed on more than 400,000 payphones across the U.S. Under the agreements, the payphone companies pay a straight fee to the aggregators for recovering long-distance fees. AT&T and Sprint Nextel have argued that third-party companies aren't allowed to sue in federal court to recover fees on behalf of someone else. The issue caused the Supreme Court to split along liberal and conservative lines, an unusual outcome in a business matter. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., in the dissenting opinion, said third parties that sue merely to collect proceeds and pass them back to the company that made the original claim is something that shouldn't be allowed in the U.S. federal court system. "There is a legal difference between something and nothing. Respondents have nothing to gain from their lawsuit," Roberts wrote. "Under settled principles of standing, that fact requires dismissal of their complaint." Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Breyer in the majority. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined the Roberts dissent. The payphone lawsuit initially was thrown out by a federal trial judge. In June 2007, the Washington-based U.S. Circuit court of Appeals revived the case. The Supreme Court opinion upholds the appeals court.