Legal Question in Telecomm Law in California

For me it would not be worth suing them for $288, but if you have nothing else better to do, you certainly have nothing to lose by taking them to small claims court.

Earthlink owns the email address and has allowed you to retain it. Earthlink is their domain just as pacbell.net belongs to AT&T. Is earthlink.net or something similar at the end of your email address? $9.95 was and still is a normal amount charged for this retention. And, the way this is usually done is to bill for the lowest cost monthly service. I did this when I lived in Mexico for a year. I did not REALLY have pacbell service but I used their facilities to receive my emails so i could access them via the web from Mexico. The $3.95 is cheap. In my view you have no cause of action. If you want an email account that is not tied (at least for now) with a monthly service fee use google or yahoo.....even these two are talking about a minimum monthly charge now that they have millions hooked.