It's "well-established" that excessive municipal fees “can hamper communications infrastructure deployment” in violation of Sections 253 and 332 of the Communications Act, said CTIA and USTelecom in a 10th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court amicus brief Friday (docket 22-2131). It supports NMSurf’s appeal to reverse the district court’s upholding of a local telecom law requiring a 2% gross revenue-based franchise fee in Santa Fe (see 2211230073).
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Defendant T-Mobile’s alleged stonewalling in the false-ring tone class action against the carrier and its alleged co-conspirator Intelliquent (see 2301240023) sparked plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated to ask U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman for Northern Illinois in Chicago to appoint a special pretrial master to “assist the parties to manage discovery for the remainder of this case,” said their memorandum of law Thursday (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in support of their motion.
There's profound inconsistency among the appellate courts over whether certain FCC guidelines “impliedly preempt state-law claims about cellphone safety,” and the Supreme Court has a “golden opportunity” to bring uniformity to the decision-making, said two dozen iPhone users in a Jan. 23 cert petition docketed Thursday (docket 22-698). The petition seeks a reversal of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Aug. 26 opinion, affirming the district court’s summary judgment for Apple, based on federal law preemption of the state-law claims.
U.S. District Judge John Chun for Western Washington in Seattle granted T-Mobile’s motion to compel its Sprint 5G shutdown dispute with plaintiff Jose Luis Garcia Moreno to arbitration, said his order Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-00843). In contracts that delegate arbitrability of a claim to an arbitrator, like those that Garcia Moreno entered into with T-Mobile, “the court’s role is narrow,” said the order.
U.S. District Judge John Tharp for Northern Illinois in Chicago appeared during a telephone status hearing Thursday to have resolved a longstanding impasse between DOJ and defendant Hytera Communications over the government’s request for Hytera to disclose the identities of its expert witnesses before they can get access to sensitive discovery materials. Tharp said at the end of the hearing he thinks Hytera had the better argument.
UPM Telecom expects to file by mid-February at the FCC a Communications Act Section 208 complaint, summarizing its counterclaims against Digicel Haiti, said a joint status report Tuesday (docket 3:15-cv-00185) at the U.S. District Court for Oregon in Portland. The court stayed UPM's counterclaims for FCC review in October as Digicel’s fraud case against UPM progressed to a jury trial. Central to UPM’s counterclaims for the FCC to determine, say court papers, is whether Digicel, as a foreign telecommunications carrier, offered a common-carrier service to UPM that was subject to provisions of the Communications Act. If so, say the court papers, the FCC needs to determine whether Digicel’s termination of that service due to fraud constitutes an unjust and unreasonable practice and amounts to unreasonable discrimination under the statute. Digicel’s answer to UPM’s complaint will be due 30 days after filing, and UPM’s reply will be due 10 days after that, said the joint status report. An eight-member jury, deliberating for a day after a six-day trial, awarded Digicel $3.6 million in damages in November after finding UPM liable for running a “bypass” scheme that defrauded the Haitian mobile communications network provider and deprived it of the proper termination fees (see 2211220049).
It's the “duty” of federal courts to exercise their case jurisdiction “in all but the most exceptional circumstances,” but the district court in businesses’ challenge of Maryland’s digital ad tax “twice refused to do so,” said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s opening brief Tuesday (docket 22-2275) at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
New class actions due to T-Mobile’s disclosure that bad actors gained access to the account information of 37 million current postpaid and prepaid customers continue trickling into federal court dockets in various U.S. jurisdictions.
Pasadena, Texas, used its 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court appeal “as a tool” to persuade the district court to delay enforcement of its permanent injunction barring the municipality from blocking Crown Castle’s small-cell installations for T-Mobile, said Crown Castle’s answering brief Monday (docket 22-20454). Though the district court said Crown Castle would suffer immediate and irreparable harm unless there's a permanent injunction, it granted the Pasadena’s request for a stay pending appeal.
Google wants the U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley for Eastern California in Sacramento to dismiss the Republican National Committee’s allegations that Google is deliberately channeling the RNC’s fundraising emails to recipients’ Gmail spam folders out of “partisan animus” (see 2210260080), said its motion Monday (docket 2:22-cv-01904). The RNC alleged its emails wound up in spam especially during the crucial end-of-month periods when its fundraising activities reached their peak.