U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel for South Carolina in Charleston denied Samuel Whatley's motion that the judge disqualify himself and U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Gordon Baker from his litigation against T-Mobile for “a disqualifying financial conflict of interest,” said Gergel’s signed order Monday (docket 2:23-cv-01339). The pro se plaintiff alleges that a T-Mobile employee unlawfully transferred his phone number to another unauthorized device and in so doing compromised his entire bank account (see 2404170005). T-Mobile has moved to compel Whatley’s Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Electronic Funds Transfer Act claims to arbitration (see 2404180021). Whatley alleged in his motion for recusal that one of the attorneys representing T-Mobile, Mitchell Willoughby of Willoughby and Hoefer, served as First Community chairman from 2009 to 2020 and that Vanguard Fiduciary Trust and Blackrock Investors were among First Community’s shareholders. He alleged that both judges disclosed on their annual judicial financial disclosure forms that they own interests in mutual funds managed by Vanguard and Blackrock, and that those ownership interests constitute “cognizable misconduct.” Canon 3C(1)(c) of the U.S. Code of Judicial Conduct provides that a judge shall disqualify himself or herself where the judge has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding, said Gergel’s order. But the circumstances present in Whatley’s litigation against T-Mobile don’t “remotely implicate this judicial canon,” it said. First, the judges assigned to Whatley’s litigation don’t own any financial interest in any entity that’s a party to his litigation, it said. Second, the financial interests of an attorney appearing before the court or any business in which that attorney may be affiliated “are not matters which fall within the provisions of Canon 3C(1)(c),” it said. Third, ownership in mutual funds doesn’t “constitute a financial interest which provides a basis for judicial disqualification,” it said.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York in Brooklyn granted plaintiffs Dean and Michelle Nasca’s motion to remand their product liability and negligence lawsuit against TikTok, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, MTA Long Island Railroad and the Town of Islip, Long Island, to Suffolk County Supreme Court for lack of jurisdiction, his Friday order said (docket 24-cv-2061). The Nascas sued TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in March 2023 after their 16-year-old son, Chase, committed suicide on Feb. 18, 2022, after the platform allegedly directed him to adult accounts with "thousands" of “highly depressive, violent, self-harm and suicide themed content." Chase walked through an unfenced portion of Long Island Railroad train tracks, texted a friend “I’m gonna go” and was crushed by a Metropolitan Transit Authority commuter train, the lawsuit alleges. TikTok previously removed the action to federal court, and the Brooklyn court remanded to state court for lack of jurisdiction, said the order. At the time of removal, TikTok removed the cases “inclusive of the MTA Defendants -- there was no other case to remove,” and the removed case “therefore included non-diverse, forum state defendants,” the order said. On Thursday, the Nascas filed a memorandum in support of their motion to vacate conditional transfer order 30 (CTO-30) before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation currently pending before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California in Oakland (docket 3047). TikTok included the Nascas' case in a notice of potential tagalong actions to MDL 3047, and the JPML conditionally transferred it to the MDL in CTO-30. Alternatively, the Nascas requested that the panel abstain from rendering a decision on the motion to vacate until the Eastern District of New York issued an order on the plaintiffs' pending motion to remand.

U.S. Magistrate Judge David Ayo for Western Louisiana in Lafayette granted the joint stipulated motion of plaintiff homeowners Gary Blum and Lucia Billiot and AT&T, Lumen and Verizon to let the defendants conduct routine maintenance on the telecom cables that are at issue in their litigation (see 2404220007), including lead-covered cables, said Ayo’s signed order Wednesday (docket 6:23-cv-01748). The actions that the carriers take in the course of conducting such routine maintenance “shall proceed in the ordinary course without any new or additional documentation or other measures required” of the defendants, said the order. The complaint is believed to be one of the first class actions brought by individual homeowners against the telecom industry on grounds that the industry’s legacy lead-laden cables reduced their property values (see [Ref:2312140001).

Defendants TikTok and ByteDance petitioned the court to deny plaintiffs Dean and Michelle Nasca's motion to remand to state court their case vs. the social media company, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Railroad and Town of Islip, New York, in a Friday letter (2:24-cv-02061) from counsel Kristen Fournier of King & Spaulding to U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. The Nascas sued TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in March 2023 after their son, Chase, died by suicide after TikTok allegedly directed him to adult accounts with “highly depressive, violent, self-harm and suicide themed content." The Nascas refiled the action in New York state court, joining for the first time the MTA defendants. TikTok removed the case from New York State Supreme Court in Suffolk County to U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Central Islip April 13, 2023, on the basis that the MTA defendants were improperly joined. In his order remanding the case, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York said TikTok could seek state court severance and then seek removal of the case again for transfer to a Social Media MDL naming the major social media companies in the Northern District of California. The Nascas filed an opposition this month to conditional transfer order 30 that would have transferred the case to In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Liability Litigation (see 2404110050). If the court grants the Nascas’ motion for remand to state court, the defendants request oral argument that addresses the "complex procedural history and posture of this case," plus the novel arguments raised in the Nascas’ reply related to an administrative change to the notice of removal, the letter said. Also to be addressed is the “unsupported representation that the New York Supreme Court was 'unwittingly’ divested of jurisdiction” at the time it issued its order for show cause, the letter said.

AT&T denies the allegations in plaintiff Linda Surrency’s first amended complaint that AT&T violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act when it was “plainly deficient” in its investigation of Surrency’s credit reporting dispute over identity theft after a fraudulent DirecTV account was opened in her name (see 2310160035), said AT&T’s answer Friday (docket 8:23-cv-02323) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. Surrency has since settled her FCRA claims against Equifax and the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange. AT&T contends that Surrency should be suing the “proper party,” DirecTV, and it repeated that contention in Friday’s answer. AT&T asserts seven affirmative defenses, said its answer, including that any AT&T investigation of Surrency’s dispute “was reasonable and any alleged violation of the FCRA was not caused by negligence or willful conduct.” AT&T “had no duty to investigate beyond any steps it took” in response to Surrency’s dispute because AT&T “had no actual knowledge of the identity theft” alleged by Surrency and didn’t receive “sufficient information and documentation” from her “to trigger a further investigation,” it said.

The “speculative theory” behind the censorship complaint brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and the Daily Wire and Federalist media outlets “cannot establish standing as a matter of law,” said the State Department’s reply memorandum Wednesday (docket 6:23-cv-00609) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Tyler in support of its March 25 motion to dismiss. Paxton and the media outlets allege that the State Department, through its Global Engagement Center, "is actively intervening" to render "disfavored" press outlets unprofitable by funding the marketing and promotion of "censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press" (see 2312060043). Named as defendants are Secretary of State Antony Blinken and five other State Department officials. The media plaintiffs show “no concrete, certainly impending injury-in-fact as required for prospective injunctive relief,” said the reply memorandum. Moreover, any such injury “would depend on the independent actions of third parties and is therefore not traceable” to the defendants or redressable by the court, it said. As for Texas, none of the alleged conduct interferes with its enforcement of HB-20, the state’s social media content moderation law (see 2401180048), said the reply memorandum. Even if it did, Texas isn’t currently enforcing HB-20, and this litigation “will not change that reality,” it said.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously affirmed lower court rulings that Dish Network and DirecTV didn’t discriminate against Black-owned TV broadcaster Circle City in retransmission consent negotiations (see 2304070046). “No evidence supports the link” between the MVPDs declining to pay Circle City retransmission consent fees and racial discrimination, said the opinion Tuesday (docket 23-1787). Dish and DirecTV paid retransmission consent fees to carry WISH-TV Indianapolis and WNDY-TV Marion, Indiana, for years when Nexstar owned them but ended carriage when Circle City bought the stations in 2019. Both companies made offers to Circle City to carry the stations for no fee, but Circle City’s principal owner, Dujuan McCoy, refused those offers as insufficient. Circle City has argued that the change in fees was due to racial discrimination, but the MVPDs said the difference was due to the disparity in market power between Circle City and Nexstar, the U.S.’s largest broadcaster. The MVPDs “paid Nexstar fees for stations like WISH and WNDY to ensure access to other channels owned by Nexstar for which there existed clear consumer demand,” said Tuesday’s opinion. Once the stations were owned by the smaller company, Dish and DirecTV “had no business need” to pay fees for those stations, the 7th Circuit panel said. Circle City’s argument that the change in fees was due to McCoy’s race “found no backing in evidence and instead rooted itself in conjecture,” said the opinion. “We see nothing in the record pointing to any other conclusion.” Circle City didn’t comment. The panel's judges were Diane Wood, Michael Scudder and John Lee.

The U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa should deny Linda Surrency’s April 2 motion to compel discovery from AT&T (see 2404040035), said the defendant’s opposition Tuesday (docket 8:23-cv-02323). Surrency’s Fair Credit Reporting Act complaint alleges AT&T, Equifax and the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange (NCTUE) were “plainly deficient” in their investigations of Surrency’s credit reporting dispute over identity theft (see 2310160035). The plaintiff’s claims against Equifax and NCTUE have since been settled. Surrency seeks an order compelling AT&T to provide “complete answers” in discovery to her 10 interrogatories and 13 document requests. She alleges that a fraudulent DirecTV account was opened under her name. Surrency should be seeking discovery from the “proper party,” DirecTV, rather than moving to compel “burdensome and irrelevant discovery” from AT&T, said the carrier's opposition. AT&T isn't DirecTV, it said: “The two are different companies.”

A woman who sued 15 videogame companies Dec. 6 on behalf of her 9-year-old son dismissed Raven Software from the negligence case without prejudice Tuesday, said a notice (docket 1:23-cv-16566) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Jaclyn Angelilli alleged the defendants manufactured, published, marketed and sold gaming products “specifically developed and designed to cause the addiction" experienced by minors and other users. In January, the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed Grove Street Games without prejudice (see 2401090039). The complaint also names Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, Epic Games, Roblox, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive Software, Sony, Nintendo, Google and Apple. Videogame addiction, also called “internet gaming disorder,” is characterized by “severely reduced control over gaming habits and increasing priority given to gaming over other activities, resulting in negative consequences in many aspects of a person’s life, including self-care, relationships, school, and work,” said the complaint.

T-Mobile seeks the dismissal of the class action in which five plaintiffs challenge the lawfulness of T-Mobile’s terms of use and their prohibitions against expressing negative comments online about the company or its goods and services (see 2401260042), said its motion Friday (docket 2:24-cv-00700) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. T-Mobile concurrently filed a motion to compel the pro se plaintiffs’ claims to arbitration. T-Mobile filed both motions at the same time because, while the plaintiffs’ arbitration agreements should be enforced, the plaintiffs’ claims “are so fundamentally flawed that they cannot survive regardless of the venue,” said the motion. “For the sake of expedience and efficiency,” the defendant sets forth all the reasons that the plaintiffs “fail to state a single viable claim for relief against T-Mobile,” it said. Whether the court grants the motion to dismiss or the motion to compel, “the result would be the same -- an end to this lawsuit in its entirety,” it said. The complaint alleges that because of the current power of the internet and social media platforms to publicize a company’s offerings of goods or services, T-Mobile has “a significant incentive to minimize” the negative publicity it receives, including in the form of negative online reviews and comments. While conducting substantial business with California consumers, alleges the complaint, the terms that T-Mobile imposes on its customers “clearly violate” Section 1670.8 of the California Civil Code.