A wiretapping case against TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago was reassigned to Consumer Privacy Litigation (docket MDL 2948) under U.S. District Judge for Northern Illinois Rebecca Pallmeyer, said a Tuesday clerk filing. Parties in the case submitted a motion (docket 1:23-cv-01430) in March to stay all proceedings and deadlines in the action, pending resolution of proceedings before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation that could affect the venue in which their case would proceed (see 2303210056). Plaintiff Melanie Tado alleged TikTok violated the Federal Wire Tap Act, intercepting her communications when she used its in-app browser to communicate with third-party websites by using JavaScript code it inserted to record mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, URLs visited and other electronic communications.

Plaintiff Zachary Rohlfs voluntarily dismissed without prejudice his Video Privacy Protection Act complaint against Nexstar Media, said his notice Monday (docket 1:23-cv-01050) in U.S. District Court for Central Illinois in Peoria. U.S. Magistrate Judge Eric Long, in a text-only order Tuesday, gave Nexstar 14 days to respond. Rohlfs’ dismissal notice came a week after Nexstar moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a plausible claim (see 2304220001). His Feb. 9 class action alleged Nexstar knowingly disclosed to Facebook data containing subscribers’ personal identifiable information and digital files of videos viewed on its WGNTV.com website.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria for Northern California in San Francisco granted the parties a stay in the AirTags privacy case against Apple until the next case management conference Sept. 22, said his text-only minute entry Friday (docket 3:22-cv-07668). Mediation between the parties is “ongoing,” with the next mediation hearing scheduled for May 12, it said. The judge previously denied the parties’ motion for a long-term stay pending the outcome of their efforts to resolve the dispute through alternative means because he said it would be unfair to potential class members to delay the case for so long at its outset (see 2303300031). The plaintiffs in the case allege the AirTag location transmitter is “the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers.” They assert their “primary concern” in the litigation is to obtain injunctive relief “that remedies the immediate and ongoing risks to safety caused by the AirTag as it currently operates.” They seek through mediation to modify the AirTags to lessen the alleged threat to stalking victims, they said (see 2304030025).

A hair color software tool doesn’t implicate faces “and therefore does not implicate” the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act,” said defendant Madison Reed in a Thursday memorandum of law in support of its motion to dismiss a privacy case (docket 4:23-cv-04039) in U.S. District Court for Central Illinois in Rock Island. Plaintiff Holly Goodell sued the hair care company in March for lacking a publicly available written policy showing a retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying biometric identifiers and information used for its virtual try-on feature (see 2303130008). In February 2021, Goodell used the Madison Reed feature on her iPhone to try different hair color products. The augmented reality technology captured and collected her face geometry data, but the website didn’t inform her how long it would store or use that data, the complaint said; she doesn’t know if it will be permanently deleted. “As technology becomes more sophisticated, so must courts,” said Madison Reed, saying as litigation proliferates in the digital age, lawsuits will demand “careful attention” to underlying technology for plausibility determinations. The company’s hair color tool “is not concerned with the face,” it said, and hair “is intuitively not a biometric identifier.” Plaintiff’s claims are subject to “mandatory individual arbitration,” the defendant said, citing a hyperlink on its website spelling out its privacy policy, located directly below its terms hyperlink at the bottom of the homepage. “The terms unambiguously require individual arbitration claims against Madison Reed,” it said.

Telehealth provider Hey Favor filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection April 18, and that filing triggered an automatic stay under the bankruptcy code in the privacy class action against the company filed in January by plaintiff Jane Doe (see 2303270047), said a notice Thursday (docket 3:23-cv-00059) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. Its bankruptcy petition is pending before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Morris, said the notice. Plaintiff Doe alleges Hey Favor knowingly and intentionally sent personally identifiable information about her medical history to Meta, TikTok and other social media platforms. Biotechnology firm Veru is Hey Favor’s largest unsecured creditor, owed $3.9 million in trade debt, said Hey Favor’s Chapter 11 petition (docket 23-41091) in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Northern Texas in Fort Worth. Its second-largest creditor is Latham & Watkins, owed $1.6 million in legal fees, followed by Google, owed just under $900,000 in trade debt, said the petition.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria for Northern California in San Francisco set an initial case management Zoom conference for Friday in Doe v. GoodRx Holdings (docket 3:23-cv-00744) to discuss scheduling and possible consolidation of similar cases against the discount prescription drug platform. In March, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu determined Doe isn't related to a case assigned to her, DOJ v. GoodRx. GoodRx emailed customers last month (see 2303010034) advising them the FTC alleged the company shared their personal identifiable information July 2017-April 2020 without their permission. Information included details about drug and health conditions customers searched for and their prescription medications. GoodRx agreed to an FTC order that it would tell third parties like Facebook to delete information it received from GoodRx, never share customers’ health information with third parties for advertising purposes, or without their permission, and put in place a comprehensive privacy program.

A putative class action complaint about Scripps Network's HGTV violating the Video Privacy Protection Act alleges concrete harm and the plaintiffs have standing, but it doesn't plausibly allege plaintiffs’ newsletter subscriptions made them “subscribers” under the VPPA, so the plaintiffs aren't eligible to bring a VPPA claim, said the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in an opinion Monday (docket 22-cv-2031). Siding with HGTV's motion to dismiss, the court said the plaintiffs "were subscribers to newsletters, not subscribers to audio visual materials." Because of that, the court said, it doesn't need to address HGTV's argument that subscriber data transmitted to Facebook includes the type of identifying information that's actionable under the VPPA. Counsel for the platinff's didn't comment Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer for Central California in Los Angeles, on the court’s own motion, removed from the April 24 calendar plaintiff John Doe’s motion to remand his privacy case against the Cedars-Sinai health system to Los Angeles County Superior Court (see 2304100044), said a text-only entry Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-870). The court will take the motion under submission, and “will set a new hearing date if it decides oral argument would be helpful,” said the entry. The complaint, which originated in Los Angeles County Superior Court before Cedars-Sinai removed it, alleges the health system shared patients’ sensitive and protected personal identifiable information with unrelated parties including Facebook, Google and Microsoft Bing without patients’ consent.

U.S. District Judge Michael Brown for Northern Georgia in Atlanta signed an order Friday (docket 1:22-cv-02456) granting the joint motion of Video Privacy Protection Act plaintiff Jazmine Harris and defendant PBS to stay the proceedings for 45 days until June 1 so the parties can "pursue potential resolution” of the case. The stay was to become effective with PBS’s filing Monday of its answer to Harris’ complaint, said the order. Harris alleges PBS disclosed her PBS.org personal viewing information to Facebook without her consent, in violation of the VPPA (see 2303210016). Her proposed class includes all PBS.org subscribers who had their personal viewing information disclosed to Facebook.

Plaintiff Edward Bienkowski dismissed his claims against Cox Media without prejudice Monday, and without costs or attorneys’ fees, said a filing (docket 1:22-cv-04462) in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta. The action will proceed solely on claims of plaintiff Felecia Hawkins, who, with Bienkowski, sued Cox in November in a privacy class action, claiming violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act. Plaintiffs alleged Cox monetized its websites by “knowingly collecting and disclosing” their personal identifiable information to Facebook, including their Facebook IDs and the names of news clips they had viewed. Plaintiffs agreed in March to resolve all disputes through arbitration (see 2303290053). In a March amended complaint, plaintiffs admitted they had accessed terms Aug. 30, said Cox’s motion to compel arbitration, saying the amended complaint’s “bald denials” that plaintiffs weren’t presented with an arbitration agreement or class waiver had no weight because they were contradicted by "clear evidence of their notice and assent." The arbitration agreement also included a class action waiver, Cox said.