Paul Gluckman

Life Corp., a defendant in the League of Women Voters’ lawsuit to hold Life and other allegedly bad actors liable for robocalls placed to Democratic voters in the runup to the New Hampshire primary (see 2403150034), opposes the league’s motion for a preliminary injunction to block the defendants from repeating their crimes (see 2404290016), said Life’s objection Friday (docket 1:24-cv-00073) in U.S. District Court for New Hampshire in Concord.

The First Amendment “protects a person’s right to view, approach, listen to, and record law enforcement, provided that there is no interference with police activity,” said plaintiff-appellant Donald Nicodemus’ reply brief Monday (docket 24-1099) in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in opposition to Indiana’s “buffer law.”

The U.S. District Court for New Hampshire in Concord should reject the League of Women Voters’ motion for a preliminary injunction to block defendants Steve Kramer, broadband provider Lingo Telecom and robocall broadcaster Life Corp. from again sending illegal robocalls to voters in New Hampsire (see 2404290016), said Lingo’s opposition memorandum Friday (docket 1:24-cv-00073).

Thursday’s unanimous decision in Smith v. Spizzirri in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act requires district courts to stay cases that are headed for arbitration rather than dismissing them (see 2405160028) “establishes the proper way for federal courts to handle arbitration cases across the country,” said the petitioners’ lead attorney, Haynes Boone partner Daniel Geyser, in an email Thursday. The decision “secures a necessary backstop that protects litigant rights if an arbitration falls through,” said Geyser, who chairs his firm’s U.S. Supreme Court practice. The decision prevents “premature appeals that undermine the FAA’s scheme,” he said. It also “protects the ability of federal courts to seamlessly facilitate the underlying arbitration,” and it advances the FAA's “core purposes” by “eliminating waste, avoiding unnecessary litigation, and sending parties to arbitration as quickly as possible,” he said. The court’s decision “is short, sweet, and exactly right,” he said. “We are gratified the Court saw the issues our way, and we are thrilled for our clients, who are now positioned to obtain a long-awaited adjudication of their claims,” he said. Petitioners Wendy Smith, Michelle Martinez and Kenneth Turner are current and former drivers for an on-demand delivery service who initiated their suit for alleged violations of federal and state employment laws in an Arizona state court in July 2021. The petitioners conceded that all their claims were arbitrable, but they argued that Section 3 required the district court to stay the action pending arbitration rather than dismissing it entirely. The district court nevertheless issued an order compelling arbitration and dismissing the case without prejudice, and the 9th Circuit affirmed.

Americans “detest” calls they didn’t ask for, but the Insurance Marketing Coalition’s challenge of the FCC’s Dec. 18 order implementing rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to target and eliminate illegal robotexts (see 2312220059) “is not a case about unsolicited calls,” according to the coalition’s opening brief Wednesday (docket 24-10277) in the 11th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court.

When a district court finds that a lawsuit involves an arbitrable dispute, and a party requests a stay pending arbitration, Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act compels that court to stay the proceeding rather than dismissing it, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion Thursday (docket 22-1218) in Smith v. Spizzirri, delivered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The district court properly denied plaintiff-appellant Donald Nicodemus’ motion for injunctive relief to block Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) from enforcing HB-1186, the state’s “buffer law,” said Rokita’s appellee brief Friday (docket 24-1099) in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

All parties in the consolidated district court case that challenges Montana’s statewide TikTok ban seek to stay those proceedings pending the “final adjudication” of TikTok’s constitutional challenge to the federal TikTok ban that's embedded in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, said their joint motion Tuesday (docket 9:23-cv-00061) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula. TikTok and parent ByteDance filed the constitutional challenge May 7 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 2405070045).

Incorporation by reference “is a longstanding practice that allows an agency to refer, in the text of a published rule, to material available elsewhere instead of republishing that material in the rule itself,” the FCC’s respondent brief said. It was filed Monday (docket 23-1311) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit. It opposes the petition for review challenging the agency's RF equipment testing order.

John Lattimore seeks to hold Dell accountable for the injuries it inflicted on him and millions of similarly situated persons due to its “impermissibly inadequate data security,” alleged his class action Friday (docket 1:24-cv-00499) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin.