Paul Gluckman

The U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland “properly dismissed” plaintiff Richard Wolf’s claims against the City of Millbrae for failing to provide a “reasonable accommodation” in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, said a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision Tuesday (docket 21-16649).

The 2019 11th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court decision in Salcedo v. Hanna that doomed plaintiff Stephen Muccio’s district court claims that Global Motivation and owner Jordan Belfort violated the Telephone Consumer Protection and Florida Telephone Solicitation acts are “not binding” on the 11th Circuit panel hearing Muccio’s appeal, said his opening brief Tuesday (docket 23-10081). Muccio is appealing the lower court’s dismissal of his FTSA claims, not his TCPA defeat.

California’s age-appropriate social media design law (AB-2273) “is the most extensive attempt by any state to censor speech since the birth of the internet,” said NetChoice’s motion Friday (docket 5:22-cv-08861) for a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to invalidate the statute. California’s response to the motion, which had been expected (see 2301310034), is due April 21. NetChoice’s reply brief is due May 19.

The California Public Utilities Commission decision to switch state USF contribution to a connections-based mechanism “increases the cost of the surcharge for most wireless customers,” said an amicus brief Friday (docket 3:23-cv-00483) from four nonprofits on behalf of the disadvantaged in support of T-Mobile’s challenge of the surcharge in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco (see 2302020058). The methodology change “will substantially increase the portion of the total CPUC funding costs borne by lower-income, minority communities,” said the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, ALLvanza, the NAACP’s California Hawaii State Conference and LatinoJustice. The new methodology “will harm the many Americans who remain on the wrong side of the digital divide,” they said. A hearing on T-Mobile’s challenge is set for March 16 (see 2302150043). With its “flat-fee per access-line approach,” the CPUC places “the same burden on a low-income individual who buys the minimal option for connectivity as a business or a millionaire who purchases every possible service for connectivity,” said the nonprofits. The “disproportionate and unfair” price change will ultimately force low-income individuals that rely on mobile wireless services to access broadband “to lose that access,” they said. Affordable and “varying wireless options” in the past several years “have helped bridge the digital divide that prevents low-income and communities of color from accessing broadband services in the same proportion as people in more affluent communities,” said the nonprofits. The CPUC’s shift to flat-fee access-line surcharges “threatens that progress by increasing the price of wireless services and decreasing carriers’ ability to offer options accessible to a variety of consumers,” they said. Though the CPUC “purports to avoid directly imposing a tax on broadband,” the practical effect of the increased surcharge “would be to impose an additional tax on individuals who rely on their wireless phone primarily, if not exclusively, for non-taxable broadband access,” said the nonprofits. Higher-income individuals who can afford to buy a home broadband subscription don’t pay the surcharge on that service, they said. “The result is not a fee proportionate with use, but instead an effective higher tax rate on individuals least able to afford it,” they said. The access-line surcharge “results in an end run around the preemption on taxing broadband services, but only for those often lower-income and people in communities of color, that do not have stand-alone broadband,” they said.

Stephan Clark, a plaintiff in one of the earliest-filed class actions stemming from T-Mobile’s latest data breach, believes there are enough similar cases, 11 so far, to support their “centralization” under a single U.S. district judge. So said his motion before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, dated Feb. 8 and newly docketed as case MDL No. 3073, to consolidate the 11 cases in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle where his own case is pending.

There’s “no way to determine whether a particular individual is at a particular place” using the device identifier and geolocation data that Kochava sells to third parties, the company's lead attorney, Craig Mariam of Gordon & Rees, told a U.S. District Court for Idaho hearing Tuesday on Kochava’s motion to dismiss the FTC’s privacy complaint for failure to state a claim (see 2212050061).

Defendant American Tower International’s removal of a state court breach of contract complaint to U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami based on the New York Convention “should be sustained,” said ATI’s opposition Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-20009) to the plaintiffs’ motion to remand (see 2302030003).

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Love for Eastern Texas in Tyler granted DirecTV’s motion authorizing it to effect service of process of its fraud complaint on defendant Motasim Billah via Facebook and LinkedIn because he's believed to be living in Lahore, Pakistan, with an exact address unknown, said Love’s memorandum opinion and order Wednesday (docket 6:22-cv-00423).

Lawyers for defendant Paul La Schiazza, including Tinos Diamantatos of Morgan Lewis, have continued to “comb through” the discovery documents tendered by the government in its prosecution of the former AT&T Illinois president on bribery and racketeering charges, Diamantatos told U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman for Northern Illinois in Chicago in a telephone status conference Thursday. The volume of discovery materials “is very, very large,” he said. “We have gone through enough of it to have a good sense of what, if anything, we would file in terms of pretrial motions at this stage,” he said. La Schiazza’s defense team has no intentions of filing a bill of particulars motion or a motion to dismiss, said Diamantatos. Gettleman scheduled the next telephone status conference for April 4 at 8:45 a.m. CDT, and instructed Diamantatos and DOJ attorney Julia Schwartz to be prepared then to discuss setting an early-2024 jury trial date. The judge also gave Diamantatos a March 27 deadline for filing any pretrial motions. La Schiazza pleaded not guilty Oct. 21 to charges in an Oct. 12 grand jury indictment that he authorized a series of nine $2,500 monthly payments, totaling $22,500, to a close ally of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D) for a no-show job. Madigan in return successfully pushed through legislation making it easier for AT&T to terminate its costly carrier of last resort obligation to continue providing landline services to Illinois residents, said the indictment.

The consolidated amended class action filed Wednesday against Discovery, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and CEO David Zaslav and Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels (see 2302100015) “asserts strict liability and negligence claims” for false and misleading statements made in the run-up to Discovery’s April 8 WarnerMedia buy from AT&T. The false statements Zaslav and Wiedenfels made in earnings calls alone are “actionable” under Section 12(a)(2) of the Securities Act, said the complaint (docket 1:22-cv-08171) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York.