U.S. District Judge Edward Chen for Northern California in San Francisco dismissed with prejudice plaintiff Joel Fink’s complaint against One Technologies for allegedly sending him at least 73 unsolicited and unlawful spam emails in violation of the California Business and Professional Code (see 2310050001), said the judge’s signed order Monday (docket 3:23-cv-05086). Fink failed to answer Chen’s Nov. 3 show cause order to explain why his case against One Technologies shouldn’t be dismissed for failure to respond to the defendant’s motion to dismiss by the Oct. 25 deadline (see 2311060038), said the order.

Aura Sub seeks the dismissal of a complaint in which plaintiff Nathan Brinton alleges the owner of digital security and antivirus software seller UltraVPN initiated or assisted in the transmission of more than 100 spam email solicitations to his various email addresses (see 2311280036), said its motion Monday (docket 3:23-cv-06084) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Tacoma. Brinton concedes Aura wasn’t the one that sent “the allegedly violative emails,” it said. That concession “is fatal to any attempt” to argue that the court has personal jurisdiction over Aura, it said. Aura isn’t subject to general jurisdiction in Washington because it’s incorporated in Delaware and has its principal place of business in Massachusetts, it said. This isn’t “an exceptional case” where the court could otherwise conclude that Aura is “at home” in Washington, it said. Aura also isn’t subject to specific jurisdiction “because it has none of the requisite minimum contacts with Washington that would allow the court to conclude that it purposefully availed itself of the privilege of conducting activities in Washington,” it said. The contacts of the third parties who sent the emails to Brinton while he “fortuitously resided” in Washington can’t be “imputed” to Aura, it said. The 9th and 10th circuit U.S. courts of appeal and numerous district courts “have concluded as much in nearly identical situations as those presented here,” it said.

Plaintiff Tiffany McDougall doesn’t intend to pursue her arbitration claims against Samsung at this time, her counsel wrote U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield for Southern New York in Manhattan in a letter Monday (docket 1:23-cv-00168). Since Schofield’s Oct. 3 order compelling McDougall’s claims against Samsung to arbitration (see 2310040023), “there have been no developments in the case,” said the letter. McDougall bought her Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G smartphone with 128 gigabytes of storage in September 2021. She alleged Samsung misled her because part of the phone’s advertised 128 GB storage space is occupied by its operating system and preinstalled applications, leaving 101.4 GB of memory for users to store applications, photos, videos and music on the device.

The 21 plaintiffs who seek to hold cryptocurrency exchange platform Atomic Wallet and its co-defendants accountable for the June 3 hack that resulted in the loss of more than $100 million in global crypto assets (see 2306220003) urge U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer for Colorado in Denver to deny co-defendant Evercore’s Oct. 27 motion to dismiss their first amended complaint (see 2310300012), said their opposition Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-01582). Evercore seeks dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2) for lack of personal jurisdiction, 12(b)(5) for improper service of process and 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. But contrary to the Evercore’s assertions, the service of process was “correctly effectuated” on Evercore on Sept. 15, said the plaintiffs’ opposition. According to Evercore’s own website, its office is located at the Hong Kong address where service was made. Moreover, not only do Evercore and Atomic share the same Hong Kong office, “but they also share the same executives and shareholders,” it said. “The law recognizes that service upon an affiliate or related entity of a defendant is valid when it is reasonable to assume that such an entity would have notice of the lawsuit,” it said. Evercore was served at its listed Hong Kong address, was made aware of the legal action brought against it and immediately retained counsel, it said: “Courts have consistently upheld such service under similar circumstances, as it aligns with the fundamental purpose of service of process -- to provide fair notice to the defendant.”

Chargebacks911 and its officers Gary Cardone and Monica Eaton are permanently enjoined from providing any documentation they know or should know is misleading or materially inaccurate when providing chargeback mitigation services, or failing to disclose any information they know is relevant and material, said U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven's order Wednesday (docket 8:23-cv-00796) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. The April lawsuit, brought by the FTC and Florida, alleged Chargebacks911 unfairly thwarted consumers trying to dispute credit card charges, violating the FTC Act and the Florida Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. When submitting documents in connection with a chargeback, the defendants are enjoined from including screenshots of webpages they know are “materially different from the webpages the consumer saw at the time of the transaction,” the order said. Defendants are enjoined from engaging in any prohibited or unlawful tactics to avoid fraud and risk monitoring programs established by any financial institution, including balancing or distributing sales transaction volume or sales transaction activity among multiple merchant accounts or merchant billing descriptors to avoid fraud or risk monitoring programs established by a financial institution, the order said. Defendants are also enjoined from "splitting a single sales transaction into multiple smaller transactions" to avoid fraud or risk monitoring programs and from causing a “sham sales transaction,” including microtransactions or sales transactions by a merchant to avoid fraud monitoring programs, the order said. The final judgment amount in the fraud case is $150,000, including $50,000 owed to the Florida attorney general for attorneys’ fees and costs, the order said. A year following the order, each defendant must submit a compliance report, Scriven said.

Plaintiff Janet Jones voluntarily dismissed without prejudice all her class-action fraud and negligence claims against defendant Caesars Entertainment arising from a late-summer data breach, said her notice of dismissal Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-01884) in U.S. District Court for Nevada in Las Vegas. Each side will bear its own costs and fees, said the notice. Jones’ dismissal came only two weeks after the filing of her class action (see 2311160004) in which she alleged that Caesars failed to comply with industry standards to protect sensitive personal information when it let cybercriminals gain access to its loyalty program database.

Damages in plaintiff Samantina Zenon’s fraud lawsuit against Reckon Media and Google are “in the range of $25,000," not the $75,000 required to remove the case from state to federal court under 28 U.S.C. Section 1332, said her counsel, Alfred Constants, in a letter (docket 1:23-cv-10352) Wednesday to U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Stein for the Southern District of New York requesting that the court deny Google's Monday removal from New York City Civil Court. “Notwithstanding her other damages, including loss of professional career, the damages are in the range of $25,000,” Constants said. "There is nothing in the complaint that Google can manufacture such a result of value to remove this case from state court to federal court,” Constants said. Zenon is suing Google for allowing a “fake company,” Reckon Media's Wikipedia Professional Inc., to use its platform to “scam people,” the complaint alleges (see 2311280021). Zenon paid $2,800 to Wikipedia Professional to help her create a Wikipedia page, but the page was never approved, the complaint said.

The case against defendants Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for their roles in initiating a threatening and intimidating robocall campaign designed to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the run-up to the 2020 election was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff for Southern New York in Manhattan, said a text-only notice Tuesday (docket 1:20-cv-08668). Judge Victor Marrero is no longer assigned to the case, said the notice. Marrero’s 111-page order March 8 granted summary judgment against Wohl and Burkman for recruiting a Black voice actress to record the intimidating robocall that they then targeted toward voters in Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Richmond (see 2303090003). A five-day jury trial in the damages phase of the case against Wohl and Burkman is scheduled to open Jan. 29 (see 2309010052).

Nine iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users urge the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to deny Apple’s Oct. 13 motion to dismiss their fraud class action in which they allege that Apple falsely promoted iOS 15 as improving the performance of their older devices but instead degraded the performance (see 2310160028), said their opposition Tuesday (docket 5:23-cv-03882). “Given that Apple has largely saturated the domestic market for iPhones by selling these devices to many of its target consumers, Apple can only continue to profit from these consumers if they decide they need to replace the iPhone they already have,” said their opposition. That profit motive “appears to have compelled Apple to violate federal and state laws” by tricking iPhone users, especially iPhone 7 users, to install an iOS 15 update on their devices, it said. The installation “irreversibly degraded iPhone 7’s performance to such a degree that the devices became, at a minimum annoying and frustrating to use, and at worst, functionally inoperable for certain tasks,” it said. “This trick is illegal,” it said. Apple “intentionally declined” to inform iPhone 7 users that installing iOS 15 on their phones would seriously impair them, so Apple “caused this impairment without the informed consent of iPhone 7 users,” it said. That conduct “violated federal and state laws governing computer intrusion, and state consumer protection laws prohibiting deceptive business practices,” it said. The plaintiffs seek compensation for the damage caused to their devices and a “sensible injunction” requiring Apple to provide clear notice of such damage with future iOS updates to prevent “this chronic conduct from recurring,” it said.

Aura Sub removed to U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Tacoma on Monday a complaint filed Oct. 24 in Clark County Superior Court in which plaintiff Nathan Brinton alleges the owner of digital security and antivirus software seller UltraVPN initiated or assisted in the transmission of more than 100 spam email solicitations to his various email addresses. The spam email “misrepresented or obscured information about the point of origin and transmission path of the spam email,” including “false or dishonest” information in the “from” or “subject” line of each email, according to the complaint (docket 3:23-cv-06084). Aura also used third-party domain names “without the permission of the third party,” said the complaint. It did so “in both the header content of spam messages and within the content of spam messages,” it said. Some of the emails use Amazon Web Service links as the main call to action link, it said. But it’s against Amazon's terms of service “to use their links to promote unsolicited messages or spam emails,” it said. Brinton is the same plaintiff who previously made similar allegations against One Technologies (see 2311220040).