Altice’s motion to dismiss the recording industry’s contributory copyright infringement complaint rests on the “false premise” that Altice, as an internet service provider, “can never be held liable under any legal theory for copyright infringement committed by its customers using its services on its watch,” said the plaintiffs’ sur-reply Monday (docket 2:22-cv-00471) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Marshall in opposition to the motion.

The Walker family plaintiffs’ Feb. 28 opposition to the cellphone industry’s motion to dismiss their RF radiation complaint (see 2303010001) confirms that federal conflict preemption bars their claims, said the industry’s reply Tuesday (docket 2:21-cv-00923) in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Lake Charles. Their claims are barred because they challenge the FCC’s RF emissions standards and equipment authorization "regime” in defiance of federal statutes, said the reply.

The California Public Utilities Commission unlawfully treated two-thirds of MetroPCS revenue as intrastate, the T-Mobile subsidiary claimed Tuesday at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco (case 3:17-cv-05959-JD). The company said it will move for summary judgment at an April 27 hearing.

Meta seeks the dismissal of a Jan. 27 complaint alleging it’s engaging in “viewpoint discrimination” against two private Facebook groups, called Wise Guys I and Wise Guys II, in violation of the First Amendment and the Texas social media law HB 20 (see 2301300023), said Meta’s motion Monday (docket 3:23-cv-00217) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas.

By installing the Facebook Pixel code on its website, healthcare company Aspirus “effectively planted a bug” on plaintiff “John Doe’s” web browsers and forced him and other class members to “unknowingly disclose their private, sensitive and confidential health-related communications” with Aspirus to Facebook, alleged a Friday class action (docket 3:23-cv-00171) in U.S. District Court for Western Wisconsin in Madison.

The four causes of action plaintiff George Schwarz seeks to assert against Nissan North America arising from his loss of connected vehicle services through obsolete telematics equipment in his Nissan vehicles should be resolved through individual arbitration, said the automaker. Nissan filed a motion Monday (docket 3:22-cv-00933) in U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee in Nashville to dismiss Schwarz's complaint, or in the alternative, to stay the proceedings and compel the dispute to arbitration.

U.S. District Judge Michael Brown for Northern Georgia in Atlanta denied the PBS motion to dismiss plaintiff Jazmine Harris’ class action for failure to state a Video Privacy Protection Act claim, said his signed order Monday (docket 1:22-cv-02456). Harris alleges PBS disclosed her PBS.org personal viewing information to Facebook without her consent, in violation of the VPPA. Her proposed class includes all PBS.org subscribers who had their personal viewing information disclosed to Facebook.

The FCC’s September 2018 small-cells declaratory ruling preempting aspects of local and municipal cell tower permit reviews (see 2210070046) is a “substantive rule” that shouldn’t be applied retroactively to the 2017 Roswell, Georgia, decision denying T-Mobile’s application to build a tower in a residential neighborhood, said U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg for Northern Georgia in Atlanta in a signed opinion and order Friday (docket 1:10-cv-01464).

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Verizon’s appeal of the July 1 district court decision denying its motion to compel the dispute of 27 California consumers to arbitration “is about an arbitration agreement that goes too far,” said the consumers’ answering brief Friday (docket 22-16020) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court. The case originated from a November 2021 class action challenging Verizon’s “bait-and-switch scheme” in which it allegedly padded consumers’ monthly wireless bills with a secretive “administrative charge” that kept climbing higher and higher above the flat monthly rates it was advertising.