Plaintiff Holly Winston and defendant Peacock TV seek a 60-day stay of all case deadlines through Feb. 20 while the parties “explore the possibility of a resolution of this matter,” said their joint letter motion Friday (docket 1:23-cv-08191) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. The parties believe that judicial economy and the interests of the parties “would be served by a stay of the action” while they pursue resolution, the motion said. Winston’s Sept. 15 class action alleged that Peacock engages in an illegal automatic renewal scheme for its subscription streaming service with consumers who enroll in its membership programs through its website, mobile app or set-top devices (see 2309180034).

Plaintiff Robert Marrone and defendant Warren General Hospital seek an order dismissing Marrone’s Nov. 22 data breach class action against the hospital (see 2311270019) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, said their joint motion Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-00330) in U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania in Erie. Counsel for the hospital has provided “sufficient and adequate detail” about the individuals that make up Marrone’s proposed class, convincing Marrone and his counsel that more than 80% of the proposed class members -- roughly 115,000 out of 142,000 -- live in Pennsylvania, said their motion. That percentage is “well above the threshold requirement” for establishing an exception to Class Action Fairness Act jurisdiction in federal court, it said. Jurisdiction was asserted in Marrone’s complaint because of diversity between class members and the defendant and due to the other jurisdictional thresholds that were met, it said. But an exception to CAFA jurisdiction exists if two-thirds or more of the members of the proposed plaintiff’s class and the primary defendant are citizens of the state in which the action was originally filed, it said. The parties therefore agree that the CAFA exception requires the court “not to exercise jurisdiction over this matter,” it said. Under Pennsylvania law, once a federal court dismisses a case for lack of jurisdiction, the plaintiff may transfer it to another state court or magisterial district, it said. Marrone intends to transfer his case to Warren County Court following its dismissal, it said. The parties “have agreed to forego briefing on the issue” and ask that the court enter a dismissal order, said the joint motion.

Match Group filed notice Thursday of a motion to compel arbitration (docket 2:23-cv-23115) in a consumer fraud case in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark. Plaintiff Sylvia Ciapinska sued Tinder and parent company Match after another Tinder user allegedly misappropriated her likeness (see 2312180037). Ciapinska alleges Match falsely advertised Tinder’s photo verification process, leading her and class members to believe that such misappropriation wouldn’t be possible, it said. In its motion to compel, Match said Ciapinska agreed to arbitrate her claims against Match, agreed that any disputes concerning arbitrability of claims must be submitted to an arbitrator for resolution and further agreed “to litigate any purportedly non-arbitrable claims against Match in Dallas County, Texas.” In the alternative to arbitration, Match seeks a transfer of the case to the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas, the motion said.

The New Jersey Superior Court granted preliminary approval Dec. 15 of a proposed nationwide class action settlement, which, if given final approval at a March 22 fairness hearing, will resolve all claims in all class actions currently pending against Verizon related to the carrier’s hidden administrative charges, attorney Stephen DeNittis wrote U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi for New Jersey in Trenton in a letter Thursday (docket 3:23-cv-01138). DeNittis Osefchen's DeNittis represents the plaintiffs in two class actions alleging that Verizon engages in “bait-and-switch” schemes by prominently advertising flat monthly rates on postpaid plans and then charging higher rates after customers sign up for service (see 2303010015). If the proposed settlement is approved March 22, the parties have agreed that DeNittis’ two class actions will be voluntarily dismissed immediately thereafter, said the letter. All parties have agreed to jointly request that the judge administratively stay the two class actions until April 1, it said. If the proposed class action settlement has been approved by that time, the plaintiffs in both class actions will file a voluntary dismissal of those actions, said the letter.

Washington Superior Court Judge Averil Rothrock granted Amazon’s motion to voluntarily dismiss without prejudice claims against defendant U.K.-based ADI Infosys in a breach of contract case involving fake reviews, said her Friday order (docket 23-2-14891-6) in King County Superior Court. Amazon sued Adi Infosys and an individual, Mohammad Bari, on Aug. 10 for selling fake reviews for publication on bad actors’ product listing pages in Amazon stores. Amazon determined that Bari was the sole director of Adi Infosys, and after it filed the complaint, it determined ADI had been dissolved and cannot be served, said the motion.

Plaintiff Devon Wallman voluntarily dismissed with prejudice his data breach fraud claims against Romwe.com owner Shein Distribution, said his notice of dismissal Tuesday (docket 2:23-cv-08025) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. Wallman’s class action alleged the e-commerce apparel store for two years covered up the fallout from a July 2018 data breach that exposed the login credentials of as many as 7.3 million U.S. consumers (see 2309260002).

Lido is a general partnership running an Ethereum staking business in which people earn money in exchange for putting their crypto assets at risk using a protocol that verifies transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, said Andrew Samuels’ fraud class action Sunday (docket 3:23-cv-06492) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. Lido’s business is “straightforward,” said the complaint. It takes users’ assets, pools them together and hires service providers, called validators, to stake the assets, it said. A decentralized autonomous organization, Lido keeps 5% of the proceeds of the staking process, pays 5% to the validators and sends the rest to its customers, it said. Lido has ended up staking more than $20 billion at a time, the complaint said. But four Silicon Valley venture capital firms behind Lido weren’t content “simply to run a fabulously lucrative business,” said the complaint. Instead, they wanted to sell equity in that business to the public through a security that Lido created, called LDO, but “no one ever registered LDO with the SEC,” in violation of U.S. securities laws, it said. As part of Lido’s efforts to solicit secondary-market purchases of LDO, Lido caused LDO to be listed for trading on U.S.-based crypto exchanges, said the complaint. Individuals, including plaintiff Samuels of Solano County, California, bought LDO tokens on those U.S.-based crypto exchanges, it said. “By paying third parties in the U.S. to list Lido for secondary-market sales with the express purpose of financially benefiting Lido and its venture-capital controllers, Lido rendered itself a statutory seller of those securities” and is liable to Samuels and members of his potential class for their losses, it said.

The arguments in plaintiff Lisa Bodenburg’s Dec. 8 opposition to Apple’s Nov. 24 motion to dismiss her first amended complaint alleging that Apple delivers iCloud+ subscribers 5 GB less monthly cloud-storage capacity than they pay for (see 2312110029) “lack merit” and confirm that the first amended complaint should be dismissed with prejudice, said Apple’s reply Friday (docket 3:23-cv-04409) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. Bodenburg’s opposition brief “offers a strained and convoluted attempt” to support her breach-of-contract claim, and contends for the first time that the breach-of-contract claim is the “sole factual predicate for her allegations,” said the reply. Bodenburg’s defense of her breach-of-contract claim “fails to address the straightforward argument” that she hasn’t identified “any contractual term” that Apple has breached, it said. She also offers “almost no defense” of her claims under three California statutes, including the Unfair Competition Law, it said. Apple argued in its motion to dismiss that these fraud claims are all subject to the “reasonable consumer” standard and must be dismissed because reasonable consumers wouldn’t be misled or confused by Apple’s “clear and accurate disclosures" about the cloud storage provided with iCloud+, it said. Bodenburg’s fraud claims also must be dismissed because they aren’t pleaded with “the requisite particularity” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b), it said. Her “deficient allegations” don’t even include “basic facts,” such as when she bought an iCloud+ subscription, which disclosures from Apple regarding iCloud+ she considered to be material and relied upon, “and what she understood them to mean,” it said. Her assertion that her consumer-deception claims aren’t subject to Rule 9(b) “is fatally flawed and, incredibly, she misstates the applicable legal standard for fraud-based claims,” it said. Her first amended complaint is flawed and should be dismissed, it said. Her opposition brief “makes clear that leave to amend would be futile” because the problems in the complaint can’t be fixed “by another amendment,” it said.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Stewart for Northern New York in Albany granted Peter Kobor's Nov. 20 motion to consolidate his data breach class action against Skidmore College with Mary Cogan's (see 2311130054), said the judge's signed order Thursday. Skidmore doesn’t oppose consolidation and takes no position on appointment of class counsel, said the order. The complaint in each plaintiff's action “involves some of the same issues of fact and law, growing out of the same alleged data breach” involving Skidmore, it said. Stewart finds that the cases “have sufficient commonality of issues and parties to warrant consolidating the cases,” it said. He further finds that consolidation benefits aren’t “outweighed by any risk of prejudice or jury confusion,” it said. The effect of such consolidation will be “judicial economy” and preserving the parties’ resources, plus avoiding the possibility of “disparate rulings in separate actions,” it said. Stewart’s order designated Kobor’s complaint (docket 1:23-cv-01392) as the lead case and Cogan’s (docket 1:23-cv-01409) as a member case. His order also appointed William Federman of Federman & Sherwood and Philip Krzeski of Chestnut Cambronne as interim co-lead class counsel to act on behalf of the plaintiffs and the putative class.

9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court Judges Johnnie Rawlinson and Andrew Hurwitz denied pro se plaintiff-appellant Ganiyu Jaiyeola’s emergency motion for injunctive relief to enjoin Apple, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon from advertising that the iPhone 15 Pro is a titanium phone, said their order Thursday (docket 23-4027). Jaiyeola’s emergency motion Dec. 13 argued that without injunctive relief, “the trusting public” will keep on buying the iPhone 15 Pro thinking that they are buying a titanium phone when that's not true. “This is Christmas season, the buying season for phones,” said the emergency motion. Dec.18, which was when Jaiyeola asked the 9th Circuit to render a decision, is one week before Christmas, it said. If the 9th Circuit can decide on the injunctive relief by Dec. 15. “the trusting public will be saved a lot of grief,” it said.