U.S. District Judge David Horan for Northern Texas in Dallas signed a memorandum opinion and order Tuesday (docket 3:22-cv-00052) granting in part and denying in part Telephone Consumer Protection Act plaintiff Steve Noviello’s motion for an award of extra damages arising from Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations. Horan limited Noviello's recovery to the $6,500 in damages a jury awarded him in a Feb. 28 verdict in his favor for 13 unlawful calls or texts made to a number listed on the federal do not call registry since 2016.
Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater for Northern Texas in Dallas granted debt collector Mercantile Adjustment Bureau’s motion to dismiss Sage Telecom’s phone solicitation complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted, said his signed memorandum and order Tuesday (docket 3:22-cv-02737). Fitzwater did grant Sage leave to file a second amended complaint within 28 days.
The appeal of Darrell Seybold, the former Charter Communications sales manager who alleges he was terminated for exposing Charter’s unlawful conduct, in violation of the whistleblower protections in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act (see 2302200002), “is exactly the type of case for which SOX was intended,” said his opening brief Monday in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (docket 23-10104). U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr for Northern Texas in Dallas dismissed Seybold's claims in a January order for lack of specificity in his allegations.
The March 27 opinion from U.S. District Judge Manish Shah for Northern Illinois in Chicago in FTC v. Walmart (docket 1:22-cv-3372) supports the FTC’s opposition to Kochava’s motion to dismiss the agency’s privacy complaint for failure to state a claim, said the agency’s notice of supplemental authority Monday (docket 2:22-cv-00377) in U.S. District Court for Idaho. Shah denied in part Walmart’s motion to dismiss an FTC enforcement action.
The case that UPM brings against Digicel-Haiti “is about resale,” said UPM’s reply brief at the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, dated Monday and posted Tuesday (docket 23-64). UPM bought Digicel-Haiti’s roam like you’re home (RLYH) service at the full retail price that Digicel-Haiti set for it, and then resold it to UPM’s own customers for access to Digicel-Haiti’s network in Haiti, it said.
Best Buy and Target each “denies each and every allegation, matter, and statement” in Redoak Communications’ Jan. 4 complaint that they’re unlawfully selling unlicensed DVD and Blu-ray copies online of the 1981 horror film Just Before Dawn (see 2301060023), said Best Buy’s and Target's answers Friday (docket 9:23-cv-80008) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in West Palm Beach. The separately filed answers, from different law firms, asserted the same 11 affirmative defenses in the identical sequence. Chief among those defenses was that Redoak’s claims are barred by the first-sale doctrine, because once Redoak’s licensees sold products in commerce, Redoak “had no right to control subsequent disposition or sales of those products,” said their identically worded defenses. Both retailers also asserted that Redoak's claims against them are barred by Redoak's failure to provide "valid notices" of the alleged infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Walmart answered the allegations March 13 by asserting roughly the same affirmative defenses and demanding a jury trial, and Amazon previously answered March 1 with a first-sale countersuit (see 2303140048).
U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles lacks personal jurisdiction over T-Mobile, and so a Hyperlync Technologies breach of contract complaint against the carrier should be dismissed, said T-Mobile’s memorandum of points and authorities Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00734) in support of its dismissal motion. Israeli cloud server company Hyperlync alleged in a Jan. 31 class action that T-Mobile walked away from agreements it struck with Sprint to develop a cloud storage product called “Unlimited Cloud” when it completed the Sprint buy in April 2020 (see 2302020061).
The district court’s dismissal of choreographer Kyle Hanagami’s claims that Epic Games stole his copyrighted dance moves for its Fortnite franchise (see 2301310037) was “consistent” with the Copyright Act, 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court case law and Copyright Office regulations, said Epic’s answering brief Friday (docket 22-55890) in Hanagami's 9th Circuit appeal.
Walleye Group, lead plaintiff in the insider-trading lawsuit against former top Intelsat officers and shareholders, can’t provide “a single specific fact” to show what information former Chairman David McGlade learned, how he learned it, or when, before he participated in the divestiture of $246 million in Intelsat stock, said McGlade’s reply brief (docket 4:20-cv-02341). The brief was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland in support of the defendants’ Jan. 19 motion to dismiss Walleye’s second amended complaint (SAC) (see 2301190044).
Though Google "abandoned" some of its anticompetitive Android app conduct under "regulatory enforcement" in Europe, India and South Korea, it hasn't made similar changes in the U.S., so a "bipartisan coalition" of 38 states and the District of Columbia "brought this case to change that." So said the states' brief Thursday (docket 3:21-md-02981) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in opposition to Google's motion to stay or defer trial in the multidistrict litigation challenging the allegedly antitrust practices of the Google Play Store.