Pro se plaintiff James Linlor’s claim under a California statute that McAfee fraudulently transferred the cyberguard.com domain to Musarubra to avoid culpability for his cybersquatting allegations must be dismissed (see 2304260025), McAfee attorney Devanshi Somaya of Jackson Walker told U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen for Northern California in San Jose in a virtual motions hearing Tuesday (docket 5:23-cv-385). Linlor alleges McAfee cybersquatted on the cyberguard.com domain, preventing him from starting a similarly named cybersecurity consultancy. McAfee asserts Linlor is suing the wrong defendant because it transferred the domain to Musarubra in 2021 with the divestiture of its enterprise cybersecurity business. Under the California Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (CUFTA), which is the basis for Linlor’s fraudulent transfer claim, “that statute discusses fraudulent transfer in cases of a creditor and a debtor,” said Somaya. “It’s simply inapplicable here, and that’s why we moved to dismiss that claim,” she said. Van Keulen told Linlor that “I read the statute the same way as McAfee has argued.” The Northern District of California sees the CUFTA often cited in bankruptcy cases involving “the movement of assets, where one party has already been adjudicated as a creditor and another as a debtor,” said the judge. “That’s not the situation here,” she said. “I understand how you’re using fraudulent transfer,” she told Linlor, “but I don’t see it as qualifying under the statutory use of fraudulent transfer.” Linlor finds it suspicious that McAfee transferred the domain to Musarubra Feb. 13, a week after McAfee was properly served with his complaint, he told the judge. “It strains credulity," not just after the filing of complaint, but after proper service, "that the key asset we’re discussing got moved,” he said: “It doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Amazon removed to U.S. District Court for Southern New York from New York Supreme Court the May 12 petition of third-party seller Longyan Junkai Information Technology to vacate a $461,000 arbitration award decided in Amazon’s favor, said its notice of removal Friday (docket 1:23-cv-04869). The contested money includes sales proceeds that Amazon refused to disperse to Longyan Junkai after discovering it was selling counterfeit goods on the Amazon store, it said.
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for Southern New York in Manhattan reversed his own decision not to delay the Aug. 7 jury trial of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for their roles in the robocall campaign to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the 2020 election. His order Monday (docket 1:20-cv-08668) directed the parties to confer and submit within five days a list of “agreed-upon proposed trial dates set for the fall.”
Google opposes two motions seeking to file amicus briefs in the consolidated Google Pay store litigation in support of the plaintiffs’ opposition to Google’s motion to exclude the “merits opinions” of Boston University economics professor Marc Rysman, said Google’s opposition Friday (docket 3:21-md-02981) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. The American Antitrust Institute and a group of three economists, including former FCC chief economist Katja Seim, filed the motions May 26.
Another set of defendants among the network of companies and individuals accused by the FTC of delivering tens of millions debt relief robocalls to U.S. consumers via the Stratics Networks ringless voicemail (RVM) platform (see 2302170032) moved Thursday to dismiss the agency’s complaint. But, unlike the motion to dismiss a day earlier from Ace Business Solutions for failure to state a claim (see 2306090032), defendant Atlas and its top officers argue the case should be thrown out because RVMs don’t qualify as phone calls for the purposes of the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
Frustrations boiled over in the letter that David Schwartz, counsel for defendant Jacob Wohl, wrote Thursday (docket 1:20-cv-08668) to U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for Southern New York in Manhattan. Schwartz urged the judge to “reconsider” his decision to hold firm on the Aug. 7 jury trial date for Wohl’s role in the robocall campaign to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the 2020 election (see 2306050029).
The FTC seeks to “impermissibly expand” the scope of the Telemarketing Sales Rule to impose “strict liability” on Ace Business Solutions and its owner Sandra Barnes for TSR violations allegedly committed by other defendants, said Ace’s and Barnes’ memorandum Wednesday (docket 3:23-cv-00313) in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego in support of their motion to dismiss the commission’s complaint for failure to state a claim.
A key issue before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during oral argument Wednesday (see 2306070069) was whether Crown Castle has standing as a telecommunications service provider to bring Telecommunications Act allegations against the city of Pasadena, Texas, for prohibiting the deployment of wireless services.
More than three and a half years since Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone filed their fake ring tones case against T-Mobile (see 2301270006) and more than two years since discovery began, the plaintiffs still “refuse to meet their Rule 26(a) damages disclosure obligations,” said T-Mobile’s memorandum of law Monday (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago in support of its motion to compel the damages information.
Google agrees with the May 23 invitation brief of the U.S. solicitor general that the Supreme Court should deny ML Genius’s cert petition for “multiple reasons” (see 2305240008), said Google’s supplemental brief Tuesday (docket 22-121). Genius’s petition was distributed for the justices’ June 22 conference, said a docket entry Tuesday. The case involves Genius, an online platform for transcribing and annotating song lyrics, and its requirement that visitors agree to its contractual terms as a condition for using its services. Those terms include the promise not to reproduce the contents of Genius’ platform.