Paul Gluckman

Twenty-three states, plus the District of Columbia and Guam, seek leave to file an amicus brief in support of the FTC’s preliminary injunction request blocking Meta’s Within Unlimited buy on antitrust grounds, said their motion Monday (docket 5:22-cv-04325) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose.

Ahdoot Wolfson is soliciting Toyota, Porsche, BMW and Lexus owners as plaintiffs in possible class actions that seek to make the major automakers accountable for discontinuing in-vehicle reception of 3G network services, its website shows. Breach of warranty, unfair competition and fraudulent omission are some of the allegations the law firm leveled against Ford in a putative class action Thursday (docket 3:22-cv-01716) in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego on behalf of Alpine, California, consumer Michael Scriber, the owner of a 2020 Ford Fusion Energi.

Lawyers for neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants in the class action alleging that the right-leaning social media platform Parler violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (see 2210240040) have a sense about how big the potential class will be, they told U.S. District Judge Roy Altman for Southern Florida in Miami in a Zoom status conference Monday. “We have just gotten our hands on this” case, and “have very recently become involved,” Parler attorney Jim Humphrey of Graves Garrett told the judge. “We have not engaged in an assessment of the size of this class yet,” said Humphrey. “We haven’t been able to do that with our client, although that is the first thing on our to-do list. I know we are working on that now.” If nobody knows how big the class is, “nobody knows how much to pay,” Altman told plaintiffs’ attorney Manuel Hiraldo. Altman told lawyers for both sides: “I have to tell you, by the way, I could have been so rich if I was a TCPA plaintiff. I get like a thousand of these a day.” Parler has a Nov. 17 extended deadline to respond to the complaint (docket 0:22-cv-61805).

The U.S. District Court for Middle North Carolina in Winston-Salem, in a text-only order Friday (docket (1:22-cv-00727), granted Meta’s motion for a deadline extension to Dec. 8 to answer the Sept. 1 class action in which plaintiffs allege Facebook’s Pixel tracking tool violated their medical privacy.

U.S. District Judge James Cain for Western Louisiana in Lake Charles ordered parties in a cellphone RF radiation lawsuit Friday to file briefs by Dec. 5 on the plaintiffs’ request for leave to conduct discovery as they prepare to defend against the defendants’ motion to dismiss on grounds that the case is preempted by federal law.

The U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Central Islip referred to Magistrate Judge Lee Dunst the motion to intervene by 30 resident property owners in Muttontown, New York, seeking to block AT&T’s construction of a 165-foot-tall cell tower in the village (see 2211030048), said an electronic order entered Thursday in docket 2:22-cv-05524. Any additional motions to intervene will be referred automatically to Dunst, it said.

Five telemarketing entities operating out of the same lower Manhattan address are responsible for causing hundreds of thousands of unwanted robocalls to be placed to Pennsylvania consumers, alleged Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) in a complaint Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-01551) in U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania. The complaint alleges violations of the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), plus state and federal unfair competition laws, but not the Telephone Consumer Protection Act because the five entities are not alleged to have placed the calls themselves.

Samsung wants the 13 class actions stemming from its summertime data breach transferred to and consolidated in the U.S. District Court for Nevada in Las Vegas, or alternatively the Southern District for New York in Manhattan, the company told the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) in a response Wednesday (case number 3005). The plaintiffs are evenly split into camps that want the cases moved to the Northern California district in San Francisco or the New Jersey district in Newark.

AT&T and T-Mobile don't believe “that substantive settlement discussions would be productive” on AT&T’s Sept. 6 complaint alleging T-Mobile’s BannedSeniors.com ad and marketing campaign is rife with falsehoods, in violation of the Lanham Act, said the two sides in a joint rule 26(f) report Tuesday (docket 4:22-cv-00760) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Sherman. “As a result, no formal settlement demands or offers have been exchanged,” they said.

Ahren Tiller, with the BLC Law Center in San Diego, filed two virtually identical, consecutively numbered complaints Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Southern California on behalf of separate clients, both alleging Wells Fargo Bank violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by inundating credit card customers with debt collection calls using an automatic telephone dialing system and prerecorded or robotic voice. In the first action (docket 3:22-cv-01697), plaintiff Mario Vega alleges Wells Fargo continued to “willfully call” him more than 75 times after Tiller sent the bank a May 5 cease and desist letter revoking Vega’s prior consent to be contacted. In the second lawsuit (docket 3:22-cv-01698), plaintiff Christopher Atanasoff alleges the bank called him more than 60 times after Tiller sent the cease and desist letter July 29. Both complaints seek treble damages for “knowing and/or willful” TCPA violations. Wells Fargo didn’t comment Wednesday.