A dozen additional cases were transferred to In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, said conditional transfer order 25 (docket 3047), which was finalized Tuesday before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML). The 12 cases, against Meta, Snap, TikTok and Google, were filed by school districts in Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, said the order. The first 20 actions in the MDL were transferred Oct. 6, 2022, to the Northern District of California for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings under U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. So far, 127 case transfers have been finalized.

A jury trial is set for the term beginning Dec. 2 on plaintiff Linda Surrency’s Fair Credit Reporting Act claims against AT&T, Equifax and the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange (NCTUE), said a fast track case management and scheduling order (docket 8:23-cv-02323). U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle for Middle Florida in Tampa signed the order Thursday. The discovery cut-off deadline in the case is May 3, said the order. 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.

It’s “imperative” that a federal agency charged with enforcing the law “is structured to comport” with the Constitution, but the FTC “is not,” said Meta’s reply Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-03562) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in further support of its motion for an injunction to block the agency from modifying its 2020 privacy consent order with new restrictions on the company’s business activities (see 2311300039). The FTC’s “dual role” as prosecutor and judge “is flatly inconsistent with fundamental principles of due process,” said the reply, which Meta also filed in opposition to the commission’s Dec. 13 motion to dismiss (see 2312140008). The “conflict inherent” in the FTC’s dual role “has materialized in the form of a long history of biased administrative adjudication,” said Meta. That has resulted “in an unbroken, decades-long string of home-turf victories,” which "contrasts starkly" with the the FTC’s “struggling record in judicial actions before neutral adjudicators” in federal courts, it said. The “risk of unfairness” has already manifested itself in the form of the FTC’s “prejudgment of the facts and law,” it said. The “undisputed public record” is sufficient to establish Meta’s likelihood of success on the merits, warranting the grant of injunctive relief, said the company. The FTC’s prejudgment of the facts and the law in the proceeding against Meta “is the latest manifestation of bias,” it said. Based on 1,164 preliminary findings of fact, the FTC has made the formal legal determination that modification of the 2020 order is needed, it said. The agency “has challenged Meta to try to change its mind,” but due process “requires more, much more,” it said.

An arbitrator in a fraud case failed to disclose that he had previously ruled in cases between Amazon and third-party sellers before petitioner Simon Haines’ September 2022 demand for arbitration, said Haines’ memorandum of points and authorities Friday (docket 2:23-cv-10748). He filed in support of his petition to vacate an arbitration award in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. Haines alleges Amazon breached its Amazon business solutions agreement (BSA) by failing to pay net proceeds of sales for goods sold on Amazon on Haines’ behalf and converting proceeds for its “own use.” Section 2 of the BSA provides that if Amazon determines that a seller’s account has been used to engage in the sale of counterfeit goods, it can withhold payments, the memorandum said. Haines’ opening briefs in the arbitration case in June requested arbitrator Dale Kingman to declare Section 2 unenforceable under the Washington Consumer Protection Act. On Sept. 26, Kingman issued the award, ruling “in manifest disregard of the law,” that there was a “complete absence of evidence” relating to the formation of a contract between the parties, that there was no statutory right guaranteed to Haines under Washington law and that the BSA was not unenforceable as a liquidated damages clause because Amazon’s permanent withholding of proceeds from Haines was “14 days of revenue” and damages to Amazon were difficult to determine. Haines argued that Section 2’s “unfettered discretion” to permanently withhold any payments to a seller “makes the provision a penalty rather than a reasonable forecast,” said the memorandum. "The withheld funds are simply a penalty that bear no reasonable relationship to any damages suffered by Amazon and should have been construed as a penalty," said the memorandum, saying Kingman ignored “this principle of law." The award should be vacated based on the arbitrator's “evident partiality” and disregard of the law of substantive unconscionability, it said.

A day after U.S. Magistrate Judge Adam Abelson for Maryland in Baltimore ordered data breach plaintiff Abigail Collins to appear in court for a Jan. 26 hearing to show cause why she hasn’t filed the required consent or declination to have her negligence case against Washington College tried by a magistrate judge (see 2312210035), Abelson canceled the hearing because the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett, said two paperless docket entries Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-03258). The docket reports show Collins still hasn’t filed her consent or declination. Collins alleges that the school where she’s a student failed to secure her personally identifiable information in a March data breach (see 2312040021).

Plaintiff-appellant Narciso Fuentes brought his action to "put an end" to Dish Network’s violations of California’s Home Solicitation Sales Act (HSSA) for its refusal to provide “in-kind language translations” of its contracts and cancellation right disclosures or to honor cancellation requests,” said his brief Monday (docket 23-15989) at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The district court “had little trouble entering summary judgment in Fuentes’ favor,” finding that either Fuentes had agreed to Dish’s terms at his home, and was therefore covered by the HSSA, or alternatively that no contract was formed until Fuentes later signed Dish’s “form written contracts” at his home, which were covered by the HSSA, it said. Dish’s arguments to the contrary require the court to rewrite “basic California contract law,” it said. While the district court correctly found that Dish violated the HSSA, it erred in denying Fuentes’ request to remand the unadjudicated claims for public injunctive relief, “for which it is undisputed that Fuentes lacks Article III standing,” it said. Fuentes asks the 9th Circuit to affirm the district court’s summary judgment order and to reverse the denial of remand, said the brief.

Plaintiff-appellant Yehuda Herskovic admits that he brought his 2nd Circuit appeal against Verizon “solely because the arbitrator denied him damages,” said Verizon’s appellee brief Monday (docket 23-648). Three separate judges and the arbitrator all held that the parties had a binding arbitration agreement covering Herskovic's claims, said the brief: “In other words, the arbitrator had authority to hear the case, and the court had authority to confirm the arbitrator’s award." Herskovic sued Verizon to block an early termination fee that the carrier previously agreed to waive. When Verizon successfully compelled his claims to arbitration, the arbitrator ruled in Herskovic’s favor that he wasn’t liable for the termination fee, but denied his request for money damages. That prompted Herskovic to move the district court for an order vacating the arbitrator’s ruling, and it’s the court’s denial of that motion that he’s appealing to the 2nd Circuit. Herskovic “has dragged out this simple case for nearly five years, resisting every order entered on ever-shifting grounds,” said Verizon’s brief. None of the issues Herskovic purports to raise in his appeal “provide grounds for overturning the trial court’s orders compelling arbitration and confirming the arbitration award,” it said. The district court didn’t err in compelling his claims to arbitration under the parties’ broadly worded arbitration agreement and in confirming the resultant arbitration award, said the brief. His “disappointment” that the arbitrator denied his requested damages “is the motivation behind this appeal, but it has no bearing on the propriety of the district court’s decisions,” it said.

Plaintiff Heidi Cramer and defendant T-Mobile have agreed that her case should be dismissed with prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a), said their joint stipulation of dismissal Thursday (docket 2:22-cv-03800) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. Each party will assume its own costs and attorneys’ fees, said the stipulation. Cramer, a former T-Mobile director-sales, alleged in an October 2022 sex-discrimination complaint that the company assigned her sole blame for a scheme perpetuated by two male colleagues of artificially inflating sales to small- and medium-business customers (see 2210260038).

Amazon’s Dec. 6 opposition to Shenzhen Zongheng Domain Network Co.'s motion for reconsideration of the court’s Nov. 7 denial of its petition to vacate an arbitrator’s award in Amazon’s favor (see 2312070017) aims to slander Zongheng, said the seller’s reply memorandum Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-03334) U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Zongheng is “a small and disadvantaged third-party seller” that Amazon mistreated with “arbitrary account deactivation" and funds seizing under unenforceable terms in Amazon’s business services agreement, said the memorandum. Amazon “improperly obfuscated” Zongheng’s argument, alleging it’s attempting a “do-over,” it said. Zongheng isn’t trying to raise a “once abandoned argument,” as “falsely interpreted” by Amazon. Instead, it's “raising a new argument because of the newly discovered evidence on the same legal ground,” it said. At issue is the partiality of the arbitrator as a ground to vacate an arbitration award, it said. Reconsideration is “necessary” because Zongheng’s motion meets the standard for reconsideration under Rule 60(b)(2), it said.

U.S. District Judge John Koeltl for Southern New York in Manhattan denied a former Amazon third-party seller's motion to remand to New York Supreme Court its petition to vacate an arbitrator’s award in Amazon’s favor (see 2306130004), Koeltl’s signed memorandum opinion and order Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-04869) said. The judge also denied Longyan Junkai Information Technology's motion to vacate the award but granted Amazon’s cross-motion to confirm the award. Longyan sought $461,000 in sales proceeds that Amazon seized, and the arbitrator let it keep, after Amazon deactivated the online store for allegedly selling counterfeit goods. “A party seeking to vacate an arbitration award faces a formidable task,” said the judge’s order. Longyan argued that the award should be vacated because it was irrational, in manifest disregard of the law and violated public policy. Longyan’s suggestion that the award was irrational “is not a valid basis for vacating an arbitration award” in the 2nd Circuit, the memorandum said. On the seller's manifest disregard claim, this isn't one of the exceedingly rare instances where an arbitrator acted in manifest disregard of the law, the order said. The judge also found that the award “does not run afoul of the public policy of any jurisdiction raised by the parties or basic notions of morality and justice,” it said.