Greg Bostard, the former Comcast utility pole worker who wants Verizon to pay for his medical monitoring due to his 29 years of exposure to Verizon’s toxic lead cables (see 2308240005), amended his class action Friday to assert that he’s not seeking personal injury damages but rather relief for the “present economic injury” he suffers by having to pay for his own lead-poisoning tests.
Another shareholder derivative lawsuit seeks to hold AT&T’s current and former CEOs and chief financial officers, plus 12 current and former board members, accountable for allegedly covering up between March 2020 and July 27, 2023, what they knew about the existence and prevalence of toxic lead cables in AT&T’s possession, in violation of the Securities Exchange Act. The latest suit over legacy lead cables joins others filed in recent months against AT&T and Verizon (see 2308020046).
Amazon seeks monetary sanctions against Julie Guo, counsel for former Amazon third-party seller Shenzhen Zongheng Domain Network, for submitting legal arguments in Zongheng’s May 8 motion to remand a vacatur petition to New York Supreme Court that she knew to be “legally frivolous.” Amazon filed its memorandum of law Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-03334) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan, seeking the sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
In an "innovation-led economy," innovation must “flourish,” but with AI "the protection of people” is critical, Microsoft Vice Chairman-President Brad Smith told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce State of American Business 2024 webinar Thursday. “We need to ensure that humans remain in control of this technology,” Smith said during a Q&A with Harold Kim, the Chamber’s executive vice president-chief legal officer. “We need to have safety and security standards,” he said. Smith found “fascinating” that the Chamber’s report on AI said that unless the government enacts regulation, “we’re likely to have market failure,” he said. “That is not a sentence that most people would expect to see in the executive summary” of a Chamber report, “and yet it is precisely right.” He added, “Most healthy markets for everyday products that can impact people’s safety do have a degree of safety regulation in place,” he said. “The key is to strike the right balance.” At Microsoft, “we’re very much focused on doing this on a global basis,” he said. “We’re interacting with governments in, easily, a few dozen countries at this point as each country is considering this.” Smith didn't mention the New York Times’ AI copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, announced Dec. 27 (see 2312270044), and Kim didn’t ask him about it.
The Republican National Committee plausibly alleges that Google’s conduct of relegating the RNC’s emails to supporters’ Gmail spam folders violates California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL), said the RNC’s opposition brief Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-01904) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento to Google’s Nov. 16 motion to dismiss the group’s first amended complaint.
Unhappy with the FTC’s “scrutiny of its privacy practices,” Meta alleges various theories why the entire agency is unconstitutional, but its latest arguments show that its claims “have no support,” said the FTC’s reply brief Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-03562) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in support of its Dec. 13 motion to dismiss Meta’s claims.
NetChoice responded obliquely to comments Tuesday by Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R) criticizing the court’s decision granting NetChoice’s motion for a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the state’s social media law when it takes effect Monday (see 2401090062). Husted said the Big Tech companies behind the NetChoice lawsuit were "disingenuous participants" in the legislative process during the run-up to the statute’s enactment and have "no interest in protecting children." Chris Marchese, director of NetChoice’s Litigation Center, emailed in reply: “Protecting Americans’ constitutional rights requires courage. We will continue to do that.”
The plaintiffs in six data breach class actions against ESO Solutions are seeking an order consolidating their related cases and one setting scheduling deadlines, said their coordinated joint motion Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-01557) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin. ESO is a supplier of data management software to hospitals and first responders.
BMW of West St. Louis defended against the allegations of Telephone Consumer Protection Act wrongdoing in plaintiff Daniel Human’s Dec. 14 first amended complaint by launching into an unusually lengthy attack on the statute’s constitutionality.
The plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation arising from T-Mobile’s 2022 data breach are to file their “master consolidated complaint” by Feb. 22, said an order signed Monday (docket 4:23-MD-03073) by U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes for Western Missouri in Kansas City. The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation assigned Wimes the MDL in a June 2 order (see 2306050001).