AT&T for more than a year has been trying to place a 150-foot-tall cell tower with accompanying communications electronics on a 40-by-40-foot fenced lease area on a five-acre parcel of land in Lane County in western Oregon to provide and improve local wireless services, but the county has violated the Telecommunications Act by denying approval of the proposed facility, alleged AT&T in a complaint Tuesday (docket 6:22-cv-01635) in U.S. District Court for Oregon in Eugene.
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.
Saturday’s 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denial of Kelli Ward’s motion for an injunction to quash the House Jan. 6 Select Committee’s subpoena ordering T-Mobile to produce her phone records was the third such setback for the Arizona GOP chair in a month. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix previously denied Ward’s motions to quash on Sept. 22 and again on Oct. 7 (see 2210070026).
Lead plaintiff Walleye Group in the April 2020 securities class action alleging insider trading of Intelsat stock is seeking a 30-day deadline extension to file its second amended complaint in the action, if it opts to file one at all, said its motion Monday (docket 4:20-cv-02341) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.
Amazon “does not dispute” that Sailed Technology’s application for a subpoena to compel discovery by Amazon for patent infringement litigation in the Chinese courts “falls squarely within” the scope of Section 1782, said Sail’s reply Friday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle (docket 2:22-cv-01396).
Plaintiffs in the antitrust class action to overturn T-Mobile's buy of Sprint “hammered out an agreement in principle” with T-Mobile to begin “some limited foundational discovery” in the case, plaintiffs’ attorney Brendan Glackin of Lieff Cabraser told U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin in Northern Illinois in a telephonic status hearing Friday. Seven AT&T and Verizon customers brought the class action, saying the transaction caused their rates to skyrocket through reduced competition in the wireless space. Durkin on Oct. 7 denied T-Mobile’s motion to transfer the case to the Southern District of New York, where U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote the early-2020 opinion that enabled the deal to go forward (see 2210110003). The case has been somewhat in limbo as the plaintiffs work to serve court papers on a foreign defendant, Deutsche Telekom, through “diplomatic channels,” said Glackin. He still anticipates the process will be complete by January, he said. Durkin asked the parties to file a joint motion summarizing their agreement to proceed with limited discovery. T-Mobile attorney Rachel Brass of Gibson Dunn said her client will withdraw as “moot” its pending motion to stay the case, pending service on overseas defendants, as soon as Durkin accepts the joint motion. The judge set the next telephonic status hearing for Jan. 27.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) reached a settlement agreement Thursday in his October 2021 complaint alleging that Startel Communications and its CEO Wanda Hall assisted actors in India, the Philippines and Singapore to inundate Indiana residents with scam robocalls in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule. Startel and Hall “knew or consciously avoided knowing these calls were illegal,” alleged his complaint.
Issues central to the case involving defendant Peerless Network in its legal fight with plaintiffs Qwest, Level 3 and Global Crossing should be referred to the FCC “under the doctrine of primary jurisdiction,” said the plaintiffs in a legal brief Thursday (docket 1:21-cv-03004) in U.S. District Court for Colorado. The case was moved last week into a proceeding under a magistrate judge for alternative dispute resolution (see 2210130069).
Both sides in AT&T’s infrastructure lawsuit against the village of Muttontown, New York, face an Oct. 31 deadline for filing a two-page joint status report that describes whether they oppose a motion to intervene in the case filed by village resident Russell McRory (see 2210180029), said a text order Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-05524) from U.S. Magistrate Judge Lee Dunst for Eastern New York in Central Islip.
The “statutory damages” provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act “violate the safeguards guaranteed” by the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and 14th amendments “because they constitute excessive fines and are grossly disproportionate to any actual harm that may be suffered” by TCPA plaintiffs, said Comcast's answer Wednesday (docket 0:22-cv-02377) to the Sept. 28 TCPA complaint of consumer Chester Graham in U.S. District Court for Minnesota.
Tech companies “are largely free to create and operate online platforms without legal consequences for the negative outcomes of their products” because of Communications Decency Act Section 230, said an investigative report Tuesday from the Office of the New York Attorney General on the role of online platforms in the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo that killed 10 and wounded three. Section 230 allows “too much legal immunity” for platforms, even “when a platform allows users to post and share unlawful content,” it said.