The deadline for filing a joint status letter in the SEC’s March 2021 complaint against AT&T was extended to Oct. 31, said an order signed Thursday by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in U.S. District Court in Manhattan (docket 1:21-cv-01951). Engelmayer received a joint request from the parties for the delay, his order said. The SEC alleges AT&T, “aided and abetted” by three executives in its investor relations department, violated the commission’s fair disclosure rules.

The rapid rise of targeted advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites “is creating new issues to unpack in trade secrets litigation,” said Parker Poe partner David Pardue in a client alert. "Whomever you hire to handle social media marketing, you will want to make sure they are getting their data from places they are supposed to," he said. "To avoid getting caught up in costly litigation, ensure the data they are using is not somebody’s trade secret." Recent “lessons learned” could be of value to nonprofits, businesses and their customer relationship management (CRM) database vendors, he said. “First is being careful about what types of information you share with third-party vendors, including CRMs and social media marketing agencies.” The vendors themselves “should be aware of the risks they are inheriting when they take other organizations’ data,” he said. “Once that data is mixed in with yours, you are infected and could become part of a forensic cleaning process to retrieve that data.” It’s important to have “strong contractual protections” involving data security and trade secrets, he said. It’s “worth considering” signing nondisclosure agreements with third-party marketing companies “to make clear what information must be kept confidential,” he said. “The NDA should also have language requiring cooperation if data needs to be recouped later.”

YouTube Channel owner Hugo Torbet had his channel taken down Oct. 2 after Google reviewers contacted him to say they found his content violated their policies on medical misinformation, said his Oct. 11 breach of contract complaint in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. At issue, said his complaint, was a documentary he produced and posted in November comparing the government’s “catastrophic” COVID-19 response with the Nazi atrocities unearthed at the Nuremberg trials. In his appeal, Torbet, a lawyer in San Francisco, accused Google “of falsely representing that a human being had reviewed the subject video content, and of acting at the behest of the government,” said the lawsuit. “These are serious accusations, and a reasonable person so accused would have denied them if they were not true.” Google didn’t comment.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico in Denver signed an order Thursday granting the unopposed motion of defendant Peerless Network in its legal fight with Qwest, Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing to stay the case and move the proceeding before Magistrate Judge Kristen Mix in Denver for alternative dispute resolution. The ADR process ultimately “will help facilitate settlement and/or resolution of this matter while avoiding the potentially significant delay and cost associated with further litigation or a referral to the FCC,” said Peerless’ Oct. 7 motion (docket 1:21-cv-03004). The case involves negotiated interconnect agreements and the access tariffs associated with them. Qwest, Level 3 and Global Crossing sued Peerless affiliates in eight states in November, alleging among other accusations that they engaged in a scheme of avoiding mandatory switched access charges, thereby giving them an unfair competitive advantage in the toll-free marketplace. The defendants countersued in March alleging the companies used unfair and unsupported billing methods, plus other accusations.

A response is due Friday from the House Jan. 6 Select Committee to Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward’s emergency motion for an injunction, pending appeal, to quash the committee’s subpoena on T-Mobile to release her phone records, according to a clerk’s order Wednesday (docket 22-16473) at the 9th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court. Ward can file an optional reply by Monday, it said. Ward filed her emergency motion Oct. 10, three days after U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix denied her the injunction for the second time in less than a month (see 2210070026). The committee wants the phone records as part of its investigation into Ward’s efforts to thwart the certification of the 2020 election. Ward, a practicing osteopathic physician, argues that the subpoena violates her First Amendment “associational” rights and those of the people who contacted her in the run-up to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and that disclosure of her records would breach doctor-patient confidentiality. “Because the district court denied any kind of relief at all, including a brief administrative injunction or stay,” Ward’s 9th Circuit appeal “is in imminent peril of becoming moot,” said her motion to justify its emergency status.

Belmont Trading owes T-Mobile nearly $6.6 million in remitted funds for the liquidation or resale of devices and accessories the carrier transferred to the company under a twice-amended 2015 master service agreement, alleged T-Mobile in a breach of contract complaint Thursday (docket 2:22-cv-01446) in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Belmont has “materially breached” the agreement by failing to pay T-Mobile the funds “resulting from the liquidation of certain assets owned by T-Mobile and held by Belmont Trading pursuant to a bailment contract,” it said. Belmont also has failed to return T-Mobile’s “property upon demand,” it said. “As a result, T-Mobile has suffered damages for which Belmont Trading is liable to T-Mobile.” Belmont didn’t immediately comment.

Liberty Global underpaid federal income taxes by $236 million in 2019 when it used a plan codenamed Project Soy to exploit tax loopholes, said a complaint filed Friday (1:22-cv-02622) by the DOJ in U.S. District Court in Denver. DOJ is seeking the unpaid taxes along with $47 million in penalties, the complaint said. Project Soy involved a series of transfers among Liberty Global international subsidiaries aimed at taking advantage of provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) to avoid paying capital gains and other taxes on gains from Liberty Global’s interest in Belgian company TGH. Liberty has challenged changes to the tax laws intended to close the loophole, and DOJ has a separate case (1:20-cv-03501-RBJ) arguing that Liberty violated tax laws with the plan.

Though Altice seemingly wants to rehash its violation of Pikeville's municipal cable franchise ordinance, "that ship has sailed" as the company never appealed the Pikeville Board of Commissioners' finding of a violation to a court of competent jurisdiction, the Kentucky city told the U.S. District Court in Pikeville in a docket 7:22-cv-00064 opposition filed Monday to Altice's motion to dismiss. Pikeville said the only issue before the courts is how much money Altice has to pay until it demonstrates it's again complying with the ordinance. In its motion to dismiss the suit, Altice said it's outside the court's jurisdiction as Pikeville's cable franchise agreement is with its subsidiary Cequel, not Altice, and Altice does no business in Kentucky.

The racial discrimination claims by Entertainment Studios Network (ESN) and founder Byron Allen regarding McDonald's advertising practices aren't about civil rights but are "a premeditated, calculated effort [by the plaintiffs] to increase the revenue [Allen] receives from McDonald’s and other major advertisers like McDonald’s," the defendant fast food chain said in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Monday in a docket 2:21-cv-04972 answer to the third amended complaint. The reason it hasn't purchased ad time on an Entertainment Studios network is not because Allen is black but because ES properties don't satisfy the selection criteria used by McDonald’s advertising agencies, it said. It said while it didn't buy ad time on the Weather Channel after Allen bought it in 2018, it also didn't buy ad time there prior to that deal. In the amended complaint, ESN said McDonald's has a practice of buying ad time on similarly situated white-owned networks with similar programming and that target and reach similar demographic groups.