The 29 Texas cities suing Disney, Hulu and Netflix for franchise fees “cannot and do not explain away” similar franchise fee lawsuits that were rejected in other jurisdictions, said Netflix’s reply in support of its motion to dismiss Wednesday in the 14th District Court of Dallas County (docket DC-22-09128).

Voyager Labs seeks an order dismissing Meta’s data-scraping complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted, said its motion Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-00154) in U.S. District Court for Northern California. It asked for a June 1 in-person motion hearing before U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland.

Google’s March 21 motion for summary judgment ignores the “damning evidence” from its own employees that the company’s explanations of its practices for collecting data from users who were in private browsing mode border on the untruthful, said the plaintiffs’ heavily redacted opposition to the motion Wednesday (docket 4:20-cv-03664) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.

Chargebacks911 unfairly thwarted consumers trying to dispute credit card charges, violating the FTC Act and the Florida Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act, alleges a lawsuit (docket 8:23-cv-00796) filed by the FTC and Florida Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa.

Pro se plaintiff James Linlor filed two motions Wednesday (docket 5:23-cv-00385) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to add cybersecurity company Musarubra as a second defendant in his cybersquatting complaint against McAfee and to transfer the case to the District of Delaware to “accommodate” the addition because Musarubra is incorporated there. Linlor seeks a May 9 hearing on the motions.

Sixteen U.S. school districts joined the mounting wave of lawsuits against social media platforms Wednesday, as budget-strapped schools seek to hold tech companies responsible for rising costs associated with surging student mental health issues. San Diego-based Frantz Law filed 15 cases for school districts in California, Idaho, Oklahoma, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Utah, charging Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, Google, Snapchat and TikTok with violations of public nuisance laws, negligence and racketeering. A similar complaint was filed in Kentucky.

Petitioner Cowin Technology filed a notice of removal (1:23-cv-03054) from New York State Supreme Court to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan that seeks to overturn a December arbitration ruling over a seller dispute with Amazon. Howard Reiss, an arbitrator at the American Arbitration Association (AAA), on Dec. 15 denied the Hong Kong-based company’s claims for over $1 million it alleges it’s owed by Amazon, the Wednesday petition said. Amazon withheld payment for violations of its product reviews policy, and Reiss denied all of Cowin’s claims.

The March 27 order from U.S. District Judge Manish Shah for Northern Illinois in Chicago denying in part Walmart’s motion to dismiss an FTC enforcement action (see 2304040010) “raises fundamental questions about the FTC’s legal authority and the proper interpretation of key provisions of the FTC Act,” said Walmart. Walmart filed its memorandum of law Wednesday (docket 1:22-cv-03372) in support of its motion to certify the order for interlocutory appeal.

Amazon wants the U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana in Indianapolis to strike its outside counsel, Robert Cruzen of Klarquist Sparkman, from the plaintiffs' preliminary witness list, said Amazon’s motion Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-02246). Plaintiffs Annie Oakley Enterprises and its owner Renee Gabet allege Amazon ignored the trademark infringement conduct of its third-party sellers (see 2302160029).

Plaintiff Tiffany McDougall’s allegations that Samsung misrepresented the storage capacity of her Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G smartphone “must be resolved through arbitration” under the terms and conditions she agreed to when she bought the device, said Samsung’s memorandum of law Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-00168) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of its motion to compel.