U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer for Southern New York in Manhattan granted SolarWinds’ Friday letter motion for oral argument on its motion to dismiss the SEC’s securities fraud complaint, said the judge’s signed order Monday (docket 1:23-cv-09518). The court’s current briefing schedule provides for a reply brief in support of a motion to dismiss an amended SEC complaint to be filed by May 3, said the order. In the expectation that an amended complaint will be filed, the court schedules in-person oral argument on the motion to dismiss for May 9 at 2 p.m., it said. Feb. 16 is the SEC’s deadline for filing an amended complaint, it said. Should the SEC not file an amended complaint, Engelmayer will reschedule the argument date for early April, consistent with the March 22 reply brief deadline that would then apply, said the order. The SEC’s 10-count complaint alleges that SolarWinds and Timothy Brown, its chief information security officer, were guilty of SEC Act violations for not alerting investors to the scale of the December 2020 cyberattack waged by the Russian government and to the company’s security vulnerabilities leading up to it (see 2310310041). SolarWinds’ motion to dismiss Friday called the SEC’s complaint “fundamentally flawed” (see 2401290033).

A seven-day jury trial is set to begin Feb. 9, 2026, on plaintiff Lisa Bodenburg’s allegations that Apple delivers iCloud+ subscribers 5 GB less monthly cloud-storage capacity than they pay for (see 2308270001), said a case management and scheduling order signed Thursday and posted Friday (docket 3:23-cv-04409) by U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson for Northern California in San Francisco. July 31 is the cutoff date for fact discovery and Sept. 10 is the cutoff date for expert discovery, said the order.

Plaintiff Charter Communications and defendant Knowteq Solutions have reached a mutual resolution of the “bona fide disputes between them,” said their stipulation of dismissal with prejudice Friday (docket 4:22-cv-03433) in U.S. District Court for Southern Texas in Houston. Court approval of the settlement isn’t required to dismiss the lawsuit, said the stipulation. Charter’s October 2022 complaint alleged that Knowteq, a Texas startup, and its manager Natoshia Ellzey sent text-message solicitations to Charter subscribers using the Charter and Spectrum family of trademarks, falsely stating that Charter subscribers could receive a discount on their monthly Spectrum bills if they paid them through Knowteq (see 2210070016).

Elly Infotech denies impersonating Amazon to deceive customers, and further denies any allegations of wrongdoing, said its answer Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-02353) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix to Amazon’s Nov. 9 complaint (see 2311120001). The lawsuit against Elly Infotech was one of three Amazon filed in a single day to halt separate sets of alleged fraudsters from running the “impersonation” scams that dupe consumers into buying fake support services for activating Prime Video on their devices. Elly Infotech alleges an unknown third party appears to have used its name without permission or knowledge, said its answer. It was surprised to be included in this lawsuit, “as it is an Arizona limited liability company that is defunct, no longer in use, and has no money or assets,” it said.

The defendants in a fraud complaint brought by the SEC need a 10-day deadline extension to Feb. 7 to confer with the commission and jointly submit a proposed discovery plan and a schedule for any preliminary injunction hearing, the SEC wrote U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman for Southern New York in Manhattan in a letter Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-10928). The SEC sued Dec. 18 to stop three connected companies and their CEO from running a “staggering” fraud scheme involving a private Nigerian company, Tingo Mobile, that purportedly sourced mobile handsets and services to “millions of farmers,” but actually had “no meaningful operations or customers” (see 2312190018). The defendants need the additional time “to continue working through the funding and representation issues” involved in retaining counsel, said the SEC’s letter. The SEC doesn’t object to the deadline extension request, but believes those “funding and representation issues are unlikely to resolve” within the requested 10-day extension period “based on information recently disclosed,” said the letter. Resolution of the funding issues is “contingent” on the release of funds by a Nigerian bank, but the bank “has restricted access to the accounts after learning of this action,” it said. The SEC “stands ready” to proceed with this enforcement action and believes there’s “a compelling public interest in moving this case towards resolution of both the preliminary and final relief requested,” said the letter. The defendants’ inability to confer on a discovery plan and a preliminary injunction hearing schedule has delayed the SEC’s efforts to “expeditiously litigate its claims,” it said. In light of the SEC’s belief that resolution of the defendants’ funding issues won’t be “resolved imminently,” the SEC has advised the defendants that it won’t agree to further extension requests, it said.

Perhaps the easiest way to address defendant One Technologies’ motion to dismiss plaintiff Nathan Brinton’s complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction (see 2311220040) is "to simply transfer" the case to the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, said Brinton’s opposition Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-06046) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Tacoma. Brinton alleges that One Technologies, a credit information company, caused the delivery of at least 175 spam emails to his inbox since August, in violation of Washington consumer protection laws. Counsel for the parties have conferred via email “regarding the prospect of simply transferring this matter to the Northern District of Texas rather than fighting about personal jurisdiction” before the Tacoma court, said Brinton’s opposition. From that email correspondence between counsel for both sides, Brinton’s counsel, Andrew Grimm of the Digital Justice Foundation in Omaha, believes that transferring this matter to Texas would be unopposed by One Technologies, it said.

The personal finance mobile app, FloatMe, and co-founders Joshua Sanchez and Ryan Cleary agreed to pay the FTC $3 million to settle allegations that they promise consumers short-term cash advances if they enroll in a $1.99 monthly membership plan, but then they fail to deliver on those promises (see 2401020026), said their stipulated order Monday (docket 5:24-cv-00001) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in San Antonio. FloatMe, Sanchez and Cleary also agreed to a permanent injunction barring further misconduct, said the stipulation. The injunction prohibits the company from “misrepresenting, expressly or by implication,” the amount of funds that will be available to a consumer and when those funds will be available, it said. The defendants "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations” in the FTC’s Jan. 2 complaint, said the stipulated order.

U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen for Eastern New York in Brooklyn ordered the consolidation of two securities fraud cases, Glick v. Arqit Quantum (docket 1:23 22-cv-02604) and Weeks v. Arqit Quantum (docket 1:23-cv-02806), said her text-only order Monday. Arqit’s registration statement said the company was preparing to launch its first live service during second-half 2021 and already had signed “major, long-term contracts for its services with large companies and government institutes,” said plaintiff Chris Weeks in an April complaint (see 2304170041). A transcript of an Arqit presentation filed with the SEC in August 2021 quoted executives saying its QuantumCloud encryption-as-a-service technology was “live for service” and the company had $130 million in signed commitments, said Weeks’ complaint. Customers purportedly included the U.K. government, the European Space Agency, BT and Sumitomo, it said. But statements were “untrue” in fact or omission because they misrepresented and failed to disclose that (1) the proposed encryption technology would require “widespread adoption of new protocols and standards for telecommunications that had not yet been adopted," (2) British cybersecurity officials questioned the viability of the encryption technology in 2020, (3) the British government was providing grants to Arqit, 4) the company had little more than an “early-stage prototype” at the time of its merger announcement with Centricus in May 2021, (5) no commercial customer was using the system with live data and (6) most Arqit revenue wasn’t from selling products, said Weeks’ complaint.

Plaintiffs Justin Davis and Gary Davis again failed to adequately plead their claims in a fraud class action over allegedly defective laptop trackpads, said HP’s reply brief (docket 4:23-cv-02114) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland in support of its motion to dismiss the Davis’ first amended complaint (see 2307030008). The plaintiffs allege that defective trackpads in their HP Omen laptops rendered their computers completely unusable without an external mouse. Plaintiffs again didn’t allege specific facts that would “plausibly support” Article III or statutory standing “or rectify the other myriad shortcomings of their original Complaint,” the reply said. The plaintiffs added only “a handful of new allegations, none of which cure the standing, Rule 9(b), or other deficiencies of their original pleading,” said the brief. Plaintiffs only “pay lip service” to the court’s direction that their amended complaint must identify the “who, what, when, where and how of the misconduct charged,” said the brief. “Instead, they argue that Rule 9(b) effectively requires notice pleading, such that HP need only be provided the barest information necessary to 'defend against the charge that they [sic] induced consumers to believe the Products were functional laptop computers,'” it said.

The SEC and defendant SolarWinds are pushing back against a U.S. district judge's request for information about any entities that may have been affected in the 2020 Sunburst cyberattack. The parties understand that the judge seeks the information to assess any conflicts that could affect his future participation in this case, they said in a joint letter Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer for Southern New York in Manhattan (docket 1:23-cv-09518). It’s the parties’ position that identifying all entities potentially affected by the Sunburst attack isn’t necessary “for purposes of assessing conflicts,” said the letter. SolarWinds further notes that providing that information to the court “would be unduly burdensome” and could “impinge on customer confidentiality requirements,” it said. The parties aren’t "presently aware" of any entities affected by the Sunburst attack other than those described in the SEC’s complaint, it said. The SEC alleges that SolarWinds and Timothy Brown, its chief information security officer, were guilty of SEC Act violations by covering up the company’s security vulnerabilities in the years leading up to the cyberattack (see 2310310041).