DOJ informed Alpha and Omega Semiconductor on Jan. 19 that it has closed, without bring criminal charges, its three-year investigation into the company’s compliance with export control regulations against Huawei and its subsidiaries, said the chipmaker Thursday. The company “is pleased with this decision” and intends to continue cooperating with the Commerce Department’s ongoing Huawei civil investigation, it said. At Commerce’s request, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor hasn't shipped product to Huawei since December 2019, it said.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar for Northern California in San Francisco denied the joint request of nine former Twitter petitioner-employees and the X platform to postpone their initial case management conference until after the court’s March 14 hearing on the petitioners’ motion to compel arbitration and for preliminary injunction, said the judge’s text-only order Wednesday (docket 4:23-cv-03301). The Jan. 30 conference “will proceed as scheduled,” said the order. No case management statement is required, it said. The employees allege that Twitter and X refuse to arbitrate “despite having successfully blocked employees from pursuing their claims in court by compelling them to arbitrate their legal claims” (see 2401080001).

Plaintiff Johnnetta Clemons voluntarily dismissed her trademark infringement claim against Amazon with prejudice, said her notice Tuesday (docket 6:23-cv-02247) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Orlando. Clemons’ November lawsuit alleged beauty products sold on Amazon Marketplace use her image to falsely promote and advertise those products (see 2311210038).

U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller for Eastern California in Sacramento signed an order Tuesday (docket 2:21-cv-00073) reassigning two related lead cables cases to her and U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremy Peterson. A third case was already assigned to them. All the cases involve AT&T’s motions to compel third parties to comply with its subpoenas for documents involving the testing and analysis of lead cables in Lake Tahoe and elsewhere that it seeks for its defense of the lawsuit brought by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (see 2307200027). The three cases are related within the meaning of Local Rule 123, said the order. “The actions arise out of the same transaction or series of transactions and would therefore entail a substantial duplication of labor if heard by different judges,” it said. The assignment of the cases to the same judge “is likely to effect a substantial savings of judicial effort and is also likely to be convenient for the parties,” it said.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering plaintiff-appellant Narciso Fuentes’ appeal against Dish Network for oral argument in May or June in San Francisco, said a text-only docket notice Friday (docket 23-15865). Fuentes is seeking to reverse the district court’s denial of his motion to remand the case to California Superior Court where it originated in March 2016. The case arose out of Dish’s alleged failure to provide cancellation rights disclosures and Spanish-language contracts in connection with its satellite television service agreements (see 2306130017). The monolingual Spanish-speaking Fuentes was a Dish customer when his lawsuit was filed, but he ceased being one in August 2017 and hasn’t resubscribed since. That left him lacking constitutional Article III standing to pursue public injunctive relief against Dish in federal court.

The parties in plaintiff Linda Surrency’s complaint for Fair Credit Reporting Act violations against AT&T, Equifax and the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange (NCTUE) picked Terrence White, a founding partner of Upchurch Watson in Ormond Beach, Florida, to mediate their dispute, said their joint mediation notice Friday (docket 8:23-cv-02323) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. The mediation is to take place April 8 via videoconference, said the notice. Surrency’s Oct. 12 complaint alleges that AT&T, Equifax and the NCTUE were “plainly deficient” in their investigations of her credit reporting dispute over identity theft (see 2310160035). She alleges that AT&T failed to remove a fraudulent account from her NCTUE credit file and reports, in violation of the FCRA, despite being aware that identity thieves, not she, opened the fraudulent account.

The U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose should deny plaintiff Bradford Clements’ Jan. 3 motion for monetary sanctions against T-Mobile for its alleged failure to comply with the court’s Aug. 2 discovery order (see 2401040011), said T-Mobile’s opposition Wednesday (docket 5:22-cv-07512). Clements contends that T-Mobile has had at least four attorneys on his case since its inception, and the court’s order “clearly established” an Aug. 28 deadline for T-Mobile’s first written discovery responses. He also contends that T-Mobile submitted 38 responses and newly produced records 50 days late, and it has “inexplicably failed to verify all of its interrogatory answers,” it said. But Clements’ motion for sanctions is “procedurally flawed” and “substantively baseless,” said T-Mobile’s opposition. T-Mobile has provided “detailed responses” to Clements’ discovery requests, which relate only to the issue of whether T-Mobile and Clements agreed to arbitrate their dispute, it said. “It remains clear that a valid arbitration agreement exists, and no further discovery is needed on this straightforward issue,” said the opposition. Yet 50 days after failing to timely respond to T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss and compel his claims to arbitration, Clements has elected instead to file a sanctions motion “that demonstrates only that his apparent goal in this case is to needlessly litigate for the sake of it,” it said. Clements hasn’t identified any alleged deficiencies in T-Mobile’s discovery responses, it said. Clements’ motion “at best” reflects a complaint “about the timing of T-Mobile’s supplemental discovery responses,” which Clements had for nearly a month before his response to T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss was due, it said. “Yet he took no action and filed this improper motion instead,” it said. T-Mobile hasn’t “disobeyed any prior discovery order,” and has shown “no bad faith,” said the opposition. Clements’ “last-ditch effort” to stall T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss should be denied, and T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss and to compel arbitration should be granted, it said. Clements first sued T-Mobile in November 2022 for damages and injunctive relief for being victimized in eight data breaches in the three years he was a T-Mobile customer (see 2306060047).

The Judicial Panel for Multidistrict Litigation transferred four board of education class actions against social media platforms to In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, said conditional transfer order 26 (CTO-26) (docket 3047). The actions involve questions of fact common to the actions previously transferred to the MDL and assigned to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California, said the order. The actions in CTO-26 are Board of Education East Prairie School District 73 et al v. Meta Platforms et al (docket 1:24-cv-00042) from U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois and three cases from U.S. District Court for Eastern North Carolina: Johnston County Board of Education v. Meta (docket 5:23-cv-00718), Wilson County Board of Education v. Meta (docket 5:23-cv-00720) and Clinton City Board of Education v. Meta (docket 7:23-cv-01672), it said. The actions seek to hold social media platforms responsible for rising rates of mental illness among U.S. school kids. The transmittal of the order is stayed for seven days to allow any of the parties to oppose the transfer.

Verizon investor Janis Turner filed a shareholder derivative lawsuit Wednesday (docket 2:24-cv-00272) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark arising from the company’s “long-term decision to leave toxic cable wires buried in the ground nationwide.” It’s the latest in the string of recent litigation that seeks to hold current and former Verizon and AT&T officers and board members accountable for allegedly covering up what they knew about the environmental hazards of the legacy lead telecom cables in the companies’ possession (see 2401100002). The Virginia resident’s complaint, like the others before it, alleges the officers and board members breached their fiduciary duties and violated federal securities laws. Allowing the lead cables to remain buried underground and letting them contaminate groundwater is a policy that Verizon “kept quiet, concealing it from those living near or working with the toxic wires as well as from investors, in violation of its disclosure obligations and fiduciary duties,” said the complaint.

Former Amazon third-party seller Jiakeshu Technology seeks reconsideration of U.S. District Judge Jessica Clarke for Southern New York's Jan. 3 opinion and order denying Jiakeshu’s petition to vacate an arbitration award in Amazon’s favor (see 2401040004), said its memorandum Wednesday (docket 1:22-cv-10119) in support of its motion. Arbitrator Billie Colombaro, a retired 3rd Circuit appellate judge from Louisiana, ruled in August 2022 that Amazon could freeze $50,000 in Jiakeshu sales proceeds after it deactivated the third-party store for paying customers to submit fake positive reviews, in violation of the parties’ business solutions agreement (see 2307190030). New evidence came to Jiakeshu’s attention in early January that when Colombaro was appointed to the case in April 2022, she failed to disclose that she once ruled in Amazon’s favor in a separate 2017 case, said the memorandum. The new evidence indicates Colombaro’s “evident partiality and arbitrator misconduct,” which has prejudiced Jiakeshu's rights “to a fair hearing and due process under the law,” it said. The new evidence mandates Colombaro’s removal under Section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act, it said.