Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey stores a “litany” of highly sensitive personal identifiable information (PII) about its current and former employees and applicants, but it lost control over that data when cybercriminals “infiltrated its insufficiently protected computer systems in a data breach,” alleged plaintiffs Wendy Booker and Francis Mascaro in a class action Monday (docket 1:23-cv-04764) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. Cybercriminals were able to breach Goodwill’s systems because it failed “to adequately train its employees on cybersecurity and failed to maintain reasonable security safeguards or protocols,” alleged the complaint. New York City resident Booker and Finley, Ohio, resident Mascaro were notified of the breach May 27, it said. The actual breach occurred Oct. 12 and lasted 17 days or more, “giving criminals plenty of time to seize” the exposed PII, it said. By keeping Booker and Mascaro and their potential class members “in the dark” for more than seven months, Goodwill deprived them “of the opportunity to try and mitigate their injuries in a timely manner,” it said.

T-Mobile’s June 5 motion to compel damages information from fake ring tones plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone (see 2306060018) fails to show they’re required “to supplement their damages disclosures with exact damages methodologies right now,” said the plaintiffs’ response Wednesday (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. “Under the standard applicable to complex class actions such as this case,” the plaintiffs need provide only “the general theory of damages and the components that may reasonably make up that general theory to the extent available to them,” they said. The plaintiffs are entitled to defer disclosing their exact methodologies for calculating aggregated class-wide damages that depend on expert testimony, they said. That will be based on analysis of samplings of “voluminous” call detail records and other complex technical evidence, until they produce their expert disclosures, they said. The plaintiffs’ initial damages disclosures satisfy their “current obligations,” they said. The plaintiffs also have disclosed “detailed information about the types of business disruption and mitigation costs at issue,” including information about the economic burdens "foisted upon them" and their employees “involved in responding to rural call completion complaints,” they said. Craigville and Consolidated allege T-Mobile used the fake ring tones to mask its intermediate carriers’ routine failure to deliver high-cost calls routed to rural areas of the U.S. They allege the fake ring tones deceived customers into believing the calls were reaching their intended destinations and thereby shifted blame for those call failures onto local phone companies, especially rural carriers, even though the calls never made it to the rural carriers’ networks. They allege T-Mobile’s fake ring tone scheme injured their businesses and those of similarly situated rural carrier networks in multiple ways.

Plaintiffs in a fraud complaint against HP chose not to file an amended complaint, and HP intends to move to dismiss the original complaint, said an amended stipulation (docket 4:23-cv-02114) Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland. Plaintiffs Justin Davis and Gary Davis sued HP in May over defective trackpads in their HP Omen laptops that allegedly render the computers “completely unusable” without an external mouse. HP’s motion to dismiss is set for hearing on Aug. 15.

Meta and Instagram removed to U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin a May 5 complaint filed in the 37th Judicial District Court of Bexar County, Texas, in which pro se plaintiff Stacey Marc Barrus alleges his Facebook and Instagram business accounts were hacked by an unknown John Doe, and he could no longer gain access to either account, said their notice of removal Tuesday (docket 5:23-cv-00776). Barrus asserts claims of conversion and theft against John Doe, argues for vicarious liability against Meta and Instagram, and seeks declaratory relief, among other remedies, it said. By removing Barrus’ action to federal court, Meta and Instagram don’t waive any defenses, “nor do they admit” any of Barrus’ allegations, said the notice of removal. Since the suit was filed, Meta and Instagram have successfully worked with Barrus and restored his accounts, it said. Frustrations boiled over in Barrus’ complaint when he described the lengths he went to in trying to recover his accounts. Barrus “did an exhaustive search on the internet trying to find a customer service phone number or email so that he could connect with Facebook support, explain the situation, and get help recovering his account,” said the complaint. After more than 20 hours of trying to connect with someone at Facebook support, Barrus realized Facebook “offers no way for users to actually connect with a real person,” it said. He discovered in his search “this is a problem that thousands of people deal with, and that Facebook offers no real solutions for users that have had their accounts taken over by hackers,” it said.

Inteliquent hasn't shown its confidentiality designations are meritorious because it failed to provide the court with sufficient facts or any evidence that documents at issue warrant protection under Rule 26(c) and governing case law, said Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone Tuesday in a reply (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in support of their motion to challenge a confidentiality designation by non-party Inteliquent in a fake ring tones case. Inteliquent, no longer a party in the case alleging T-Mobile inserted instead of connecting calls to rural areas in the U.S. that have expensive routing fees, said there’s no “crisis or urgency” in producing documents about call completion statistics and customer routing that could relate only to a “conspiracy claim that has been permanently dismissed.” Craigville and Consolidated Telephone said Tuesday Inteliquent’s opposition to their motion “fails to justify the overbroad confidentiality designations” the company or former CEO Fritz Hendricks attached to each of 237 documents marked confidential in response to a subpoena. This dispute started with plaintiffs noticing the deposition of Hendricks, “a material fact witness,” but it isn’t limited to that deposition, said the reply. Hendricks gave testimony, and many of his documents or Inteliquent documents bearing his name “were marked as exhibits." That testimony confirmed that documents with his name “are material to a number of issues in the case,” and plaintiffs plan to use them in future filings, “and when they do so, expect to file them publicly,” it said. The court should grant their motion and order Inteliquent to de-designate all Hendricks documents and produce new images “without confidentiality stamps.”

Netlatitude and its CEO Kurt Hannigan agreed to pay the FTC $325,000 of an $8 million suspended judgment to settle allegations they inundated consumers with debt relief telemarketing calls in violation of the FTC Act and the agency’s Telemarketing Sales Rule, said a stipulated order Friday (docket 3:23-cv-00313) in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego. Netlatitude and Hannigan neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the FTC’s complaint, said the order. “Only for the purposes of this action,” the defendants “admit the facts necessary to establish jurisdiction,” it said. The FTC’s Feb. 16 complaint alleged Stratics Networks’ outbound calling service enabled its clients to transmit millions of robocalls using VoIP (see 2302170032). From 2013 to 2020, Stratics sold its wholesale session initiation protocol service to other VoIP service companies, including Netlatitude and Hannigan, and “many others,” it said. The allegations remain pending against eight other defendants, including Stratics.

The personally identifiable information (PII) of plaintiffs Peter Ferrendino and Jacob Kilgore was “exfiltrated and compromised” in the data breach that T-Mobile announced Jan. 19, alleged a new class action Friday (docket 4:23-cv-00418) in U.S. District Court for Western Missouri in Kansas City. That’s the same court to which the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, in a June 2 order (see 2306050001), transferred the 16 previous class actions emanating from the same data breach for pretrial consolidation under U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes. The Ferrendino/Kilgore case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan. Their class action arises from T-Mobile’s failure “to protect their information systems that contain PII,” and its failure to provide “timely and adequate notice” to the plaintiffs and their proposed class members that their PII “had been compromised,” it said. The data breach “was a direct result of T-Mobile’s failure to implement adequate and reasonable cybersecurity procedures and protocols,” it said. The complaint, for negligence, breach of contract and invasion of privacy, alleges violations of multiple statutes, including the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act, the Ohio Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, and the Declaratory Judgment Act. Ferrendino is a resident of Pennsylvania and Kilgore lives in Ohio.

Despite Samsung’s arguments that plaintiff Antonio Lewis’ claims must be compelled to arbitration because it provided conspicuous notice of the arbitration agreement, its motion to compel should be denied, said Lewis’ memorandum of law in opposition Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-10882) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Lewis’ putative class action alleges Samsung duped consumers into believing its Galaxy Z Fold3 foldable smartphone was more durable than it really was (see 2305020029). Samsung’s arbitration provisions aren’t “valid,” said the memorandum. Samsung argues Lewis was presented with conspicuous arbitration terms and conditions, first on the Z Fold3’s exterior packaging, then in a pamphlet inside the box and finally during the clickwrap set-up process, it said. But this presumes the elements of a contract exist, along with the absence of generally applicable contract defenses, such as fraud, duress or unconscionability, it said.

Kessler Topaz attorneys for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, object to the notice filed June 12 in the social media multidistrict litigation by co-lead counsel in the MDL from Lieff Cabraser, Seeger Weiss and Motley Rice, the attorneys wrote U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California in Oakland in a letter Wednesday (docket 4:22-md-03047). The notice asked the court to establish a six-member subcommittee for overseeing and litigating issues in the MDL unique to school districts and other governmental entities. Though “ostensibly filed” on all the plaintiffs’ behalf, “we were not consulted, notified, or contacted” before the notice was filed, said the Kessler Topaz attorneys. Though they support creating a subcommittee to represent governmental entities, they ask that counsel for the city of Providence be appointed to the subcommittee or that the court set a briefing schedule so that the city's counsel can apply to be named, they said. None of the firms identified in the proposed leadership structure represents a large municipality like Providence, they said. The firms also don’t represent any governmental entities from New England, they said. The conduct of the social media defendants’ in the MDL “has caused significant harm to communities throughout this country, including cities and municipalities in New England,” they said. It’s "imperative" that the subcommittee include counsel for the city of Providence to ensure “better representation” of the communities affected by the defendants’ conduct, they said.

The parties in two related class actions against Verizon agreed further conferral should enable them to stipulate to the facts necessary for the court to resolve their disputes over whether the matters should go forward in arbitration or in court, said Stephen DeNittis of DeNittis Osefchen, lead attorney in both cases, in a Friday letter (see [3:23-cv-01138]) to U.S. District Judge Zahid Qurashi for New Jersey. Citing the court’s June 2 order denying Verizon’s motion to compel arbitration without prejudice in Corsi v. Cellco Partnership, DeNittis said the parties also agreed Verizon will withdraw, without prejudice, its pending motion to compel arbitration in the Allen v. Cellco Partnership case. The parties plan to file the stipulations before July 31, plus proposed briefing schedules for Verizon’s renewed motions to compel arbitration. The parties agreed Verizon’s obligation to answer or move substantively against the Allen and Corsi complaints will be deferred until after the court decides on Verizon’s renewed motions to compel arbitration in both cases. Qurashi signed an order Monday approving the schedule. Plaintiffs in the class actions allege Verizon engaged in a “bait and switch” scheme, advertising a lower price for wireless services before they signed up but then assessing an additional and previously undisclosed “administrative charge” on their monthly bills. The consumers further claim Verizon lied to them by calling the fee a surcharge to reimburse Verizon for the costs of government charges billed to Verizon, when the fee isn’t “in any way related to any government fee or charge.”