Paul Gluckman

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta for the District of Columbia, in a ruling Wednesday (docket 1:20-cv-03010), granted in part and denied in part the New York Times' Jan. 19 motion to unseal more than two dozen trial exhibits introduced as evidence in September’s bench trial in the case brought by DOJ and the attorneys general of 48 states (see 2309120075).

U.S. Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc for New Hampshire in Concord denied without prejudice the plaintiffs’ April 18 motion for alternative service against robocalling defendant Steve Kramer, said the judge’s text-only endorsed order Wednesday (docket 1:24-cv-00073).

The U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit should deny Essential Network Technologies and MetComm.Net's Feb. 14 petition challenging the authority of the FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Co. to withhold reimbursement of discounts for IT and broadband services that the two companies provided to schools under Section 254 of the Communications Act (see 2402200044), said the FCC’s opposition Wednesday (docket 24-1027).

T-Mobile seeks to compel plaintiff Jesus Marcos’ SIM swap claims to arbitration because he “repeatedly consented” to T-Mobile’s terms and conditions, including their arbitration provisions, said T-Mobile’s memorandum of points and authorities Monday (docket 5:24-cv-00085) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Riverside in support of its motion to compel. T-Mobile seeks to stay the litigation, pending the completion of the arbitration.

Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s motion to dismiss plaintiff Thomas Grant’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action (see 2404030047) is “wholly lacking in merit,” said Grant’s opposition Monday (docket 2:24-cv-00281) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. Grant’s TCPA complaint alleges Ramaswamy’s campaign, Vivek 2024, which was suspended Jan. 15, placed calls with the candidate's prerecorded voice. They were sent to consumers’ cellphones to promote the candidate’s telephonic town hall events. The calls were placed without obtaining consumers' prior express consent, the complaint alleges. Grant contends that a political candidate who doesn’t make calls, but whose official campaign instead makes them for him, may be held personally liable under the TCPA. Grant “sufficiently alleges” Ramaswamy’s liability for the prerecorded political campaign calls he received, said his opposition. As a result, Grant’s injuries from the calls “are traceable to Ramaswamy’s conduct,” it said. Grant sufficiently alleges that Ramaswamy “either personally placed the calls or, alternatively, was so heavily involved in the calls that he can either be deemed to have initiated them or is liable under control based and vicarious theories of liability,” it said. With regard to each theory, Grant alleges that Ramaswamy “determined to whom prerecorded calls would be sent, when they would be sent, and their content, and otherwise knew about and expressly authorized the transmission of the calls for his own personal benefit” as a candidate for president, “without consent, and despite complaints about them,” said the opposition. Grant’s allegations “are sufficient to put Ramaswamy on notice” of his claims, it said: “These are precisely the same types of allegations that have been deemed sufficient at the motion to dismiss stage to assert a TCPA claim against a political candidate arising from his campaign’s robocalls.” Ramaswamy’s robocalls aren’t “otherwise exempt from liability,” said the opposition. The exemptions Ramaswamy relies on “apply only to robocalls to landline numbers and not to robocalls to wireless numbers,” it said. His motion to dismiss should be denied “in total,” it said. Ramaswamy either expressly authorized making the prerecorded calls or knew that they were going to be made for his personal benefit, said the opposition. He did “nothing to stop them,” despite complaints from consumers about receiving them, it said. Ramaswamy also controlled the recipients of the calls by dictating that the messages were to be sent to voters registered as independents who had no prior relationship with him, said the opposition. Ramaswamy also controlled or had the right to control the messages' content, “as he is the candidate who ultimately stood to be elected” and personally recorded many of the messages transmitted to consumers as part of the prerecorded calls promoting his town hall meetings, it said.

Section 60506 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “should have been as unremarkable as it was uncontroversial,” said a brief Monday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from 20 industry and business petitioners, including CTIA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in support of their 16 consolidated challenges to the FCC’s Nov. 20 digital discrimination order (see 240319004).

The Insurance Marketing Coalition asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court to reject the FCC’s opposition to the coalition’s motion to stay portions of the commission’s Dec. 18 order implementing rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to target and eliminate illegal robotexts, pending the disposition of the coalition’s appeal to vacate the order, the coalition’s reply said Monday (docket 24-10277).

In their April 12 opposition to the NBCUniversal and Peacock motion to dismiss their first amended complaint (see 2404160001), plaintiffs Amma Afriyie and Roy Campbell “present arguments wholly divorced from the cases they cite,” said the defendants’ reply Friday (docket 1:23-cv-09433) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of the motion to dismiss.

Public companies and their officers can’t make public statements “claiming to follow practices that are important to investors while knowing that they pervasively fail to do so.” That is the “essence” of the SEC’s securities fraud case against SolarWinds, according to the SEC’s opposition Friday (docket 1:23-cv-09518) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan to SolarWinds’ March 22 motion to dismiss the SEC’s Feb. 16 amended complaint (see 2403250039).

T-Mobile’s 2020 Sprint buy “fundamentally changed the structure of the retail wireless market,” causing reduced competition and higher prices, said the seven AT&T and Verizon customer plaintiffs who seek to vacate the transaction on antitrust grounds. Their answering brief Thursday (docket 24-8013) in the 7th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court opposes T-Mobile’s petition for interlocutory review to reverse the district court’s denial of its motion to dismiss their T-Mobile/Sprint challenge for lack of antitrust standing (see 2404090059).