U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for Southern New York granted summary judgment against defendants Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for their roles in initiating a threatening and intimidating robocall designed to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the run-up to the 2020 election, said the 111-page order he signed Wednesday (docket 1:20-cv-08668).
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.
A new tagalong class action seeks to hold T-Mobile accountable for the massive data breach it disclosed in a Jan. 19 SEC filing (see 2301230046). But the complaint, filed Wednesday (docket 3:23-cv-00427) in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego, is unique among the others for the voluminous number of plaintiffs it names -- 46. We believe it to be the 16th class action filed since T-Mobile disclosed that bad actors accessed the personally identifiable information (PII) of 37 million current prepaid and postpaid account holders (see 2303080003).
Plaintiff Peter Grayson wants the U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark to deny BMW’s motion to compel his 3G telematics dispute to arbitration (see 2301310001) because the BMW Assist subscriber agreement he signed isn’t applicable to the inoperable telematics control unit (TCU) at issue in his case, said his opposition to the motion Tuesday (docket 2:22-cv-06103).
Plaintiff Marcus Baker provides no case law supporting his “draconian position” that his Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act claims against Match Group should proceed before the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago, rather than in small claims court, as JAMS (formerly Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services) ordered when it closed Baker’s arbitration, said the dating service Tuesday in its reply (docket 1:22-cv-06924) to Baker’s opposition to Match Group’s Jan. 13 motion to dismiss (see 2302150002).
The Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech to censor social media content (see 2301090030) “involves some of the most egregious First Amendment violations in American history,” said the Republican Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general in their supplemental brief Tuesday (docket 3:22-cv-01213) in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in support of their motion for a preliminary injunction. The AGs soon will file motion pursuing class allegations against the White House, it said.
Defendant kitchenware company Food52 agreed to use “reasonable efforts” within 18 months to make its website accessible to the blind and visually impaired, in compliance with Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It signed a consent decree March 2 with plaintiff Ramon Fontanez, as posted Monday (docket 1:22-cv-09584) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York.
Crown Castle’s September 2020 argument in U.S. District Court for Southern Texas in Houston that the Telecommunications Act preempts the city of Pasadena, Texas, design manual is “inconsistent with the unambiguous language” of the statute’s Section 253, said Pasadena’s reply brief Monday (docket 22-20454) in the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court. Pasadena wants to reverse the lower court’s granting of summary judgment in Crown Castle’s favor on grounds that a "plain reading" of the manual shows the spacing requirement for small node networks is "clearly more burdensome" than the requirements applicable to other users of the public rights of way (see 2212010001).
Wireless ISP NMSurf, in its appeal of the district court’s upholding of Santa Fe’s 2% revenue-based franchise fee, didn’t identify any legal error by the district court that would warrant the appellate court to reverse it, argued the city in its response brief Friday (docket 22-2131) in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Though “cloaked in the garb" of protecting children’s privacy, California’s age-appropriate social media design law (AB-2273) “is in reality a broad and unconstitutional attempt to restrict speech and control the information that can be provided to minors.” So said CCIA’s amicus brief Friday (docket 5:22-cv-08861) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose in support of NetChoice’s motion for a preliminary injunction to block the law from taking effect in July 2024 (see 2212140063).
The FCC’s apparent 2019 rejection of the proposed “do-or-die” deal for Intelsat and other C-Band Alliance members to privately auction $60 billion in spectrum, and the $246 million in Intelsat stock divested by top investors in “a rushed overnight fire sale” before the bad news got out, “would lead any reasonable person and juror to believe that there was insider trading.” So said lead plaintiff the Walleye Group in its opposition Thursday (docket 4:20-cv-02341) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland, to the Silver Lake defendants’ Jan. 19 motion to dismiss Walleye’s second amended complaint (see 2301190044).