LinkedIn seeks a default judgment against the website TopSocial24 and its owner, Golam Mostafa, for failing to appear or otherwise defend against allegations they sell “inauthentic engagement” on the platform, including fake followers, fake comments, fake likes and fake connections (see 2304260001), said its filing Wednesday (docket 5:23-cv-00110) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose. “After admitting to operating TopSocial24 and expressing contrition for his actions” that violated the law, Mostafa “went silent and stopped responding to counsel’s outreach,” it said. “To this day, TopSocial24 advertises the opportunity to buy LinkedIn followers,” it said. TopSocial24 also advertised a “drip-feed” feature through which its customers “could gradually add fake LinkedIn engagement over time, likely in the hopes of evading LinkedIn’s technical defenses and further deceiving members that the engagement is genuine,” it said.

The opening brief from plaintiff-appellant Walleye Group is due Aug. 2 in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals review it seeks of an April 27 district judge’s decision rejecting its second amended class-action suit against former Intelsat officers and shareholders on allegations of insider trading (see 2305300008), said a time schedule order Wednesday (docket 23-15822). The defendant-appellees’ answering brief is due Sept. 5, said the order. Walleye alleges the former Intelsat officers and shareholders dumped their stock holdings before the public found out the FCC wouldn't allow a private auction of the satellite company's C-band spectrum.

SkyBell Technologies terminated a video doorbell contract with Resideo "without valid cause," alleged a May 23 complaint (docket 1:23-cv-04295) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Resideo sold SkyBell video doorbells to distributors and professional installers for use in residences under a 2015 strategic supplier agreement that was “amended from time to time”; the contract expires in December 2024. In April 2020, Resideo announced its plan to begin manufacturing and selling a new video doorbell product of its own, the First Alert VX1 HD video doorbell. The agreement is nonexclusive, “so Plaintiffs have every right under the Agreement to manufacture, sell, and service video doorbells not supplied by SkyBell,” Resideo said. In its April termination notice to Resideo, SkyBell asserted Resideo or its Ademco subsidiary breached the agreement by selling the “unlicensed” First Alert VX1 video doorbell “that infringes SkyBell patents,” said the complaint. It then terminated the agreement for cause “based on an asserted breach of contract” by Resideo, claiming the company took “bad faith, knowing and intentional action” to violate SkyBell’s intellectual property rights. As of the date of the termination notice, the VX1 hadn't gone on sale, “and SkyBell therefore had no opportunity to obtain or analyze the VX1,” Resideo said. Beyond reviewing Resideo’s basic marketing publications, SkyBell had no chance "to obtain, disassemble, reverse engineer, or otherwise analyze the VX1,” it said. “SkyBell has articulated no factual or legal basis” for its assertation that Resideo breached the agreement, and “therefore has no valid cause to terminate the Agreement,” the complaint said. If SkyBell’s termination is allowed to take effect, Resideo will suffer damages of over $75,000, it said. Early termination would also mean Resideo “will be prematurely deprived of SkyBell’s services,” which are necessary for uninterrupted operation of Resideo’s installed base of SkyBell video doorbells. “This will cause harm to Plaintiffs’ relationships with distributors, installers, and end users, as well as harm to Plaintiffs’ reputation for standing behind and supporting the products they sell,” Resideo said. It seeks an order enjoining SkyBell from taking any act or omission based on the “invalid purported termination” of the agreement and forcing SkyBell to continue performing under the agreement until it expires Dec. 31, 2024.

Plaintiffs Ayana Stevenson and David Ambrose declined to have their fraud class action against SiriusXM proceed before a magistrate judge, said their declination form Monday (docket 3:23-cv-02367) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. Their case will be reassigned to a district judge, it said. Stevenson and Ambrose allege SiriusXM falsely advertises its music plans at lower prices than it charges by imposing a concocted U.S. music royalty fee on its monthly subscribers (see 2305160038).

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn dismissed with prejudice a suit from a group of Ericsson investors alleging the company misled investors about elements of a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act proceeding. U.S. District Court Judge William Kuntz sided with Ericsson, ruling the investors failed to adequately claim the company made misstatements since the alleged lies were immaterial as a matter of law or not false when made, said a Wednesday ruling (docket 1:22-cv-1167). Ericsson was previously found to have violated the FCPA stemming from its operations in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait. In a deferred prosecution agreement, an internal investigation into Ericsson's Iraqi business practices revealed "rampant corruption and FCPA violations," including the payment of bribes to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria for access to transportation through ISIS territory, said the complaint. After news of the corruption in Ericsson's Iraq operations, the investors filed suit, claiming the company misled investors on (1) the source of Ericsson’s growth in the Middle East; (2) the strength of Ericsson’s compliance policies and anti-corruption controls; and (3) the resolution of the DOJ and SEC investigations and the risk of future enforcement actions. Kuntz dismissed the action, finding the statements on the firm's growth in the Middle East "too general to require further disclosure" and the statements on compliance too general, having never promised "perfect compliance." Ericsson's statements on the enforcement actions weren't misleading given the various warnings the company made on its possible compliance failures, Kuntz said.

Emails between Harbinger Capital Partners and Apollo Global Management executives should have raised red flags by 2011 that Harbinger was perhaps being defrauded in its $2 billion investment into SkyTerra Communications and its planned terrestrial/satellite L-band communications network, New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed of New York County said last week. As such, Reed ruled Harbinger's 2017 fraud complaint falls outside the statute of limitations for bringing such a complaint. In a series of 2011 emails quoted in the decision, Harbinger Managing Director Philip Falcone repeatedly asks defendant/former SkyTerra CEO Alex Good whether SkyTerra's L-band interference tests had shown notable interference with GPS and whether SkyTerra and its owner, Apollo, had made those test results clear to Harbigner. "Everyone says I should sue you for fraud . ... do I listen to them? I'm trying to find something where the gps issue was disclosed as I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt but there are some nasty bondholders out there," Falcone wrote Oct. 6 of that year. In a Nov. 8 email, Good maintained there were plenty of disclosures to Harbinger's team, and the interference potential was a reason the plaintiffs were able to buy the L-band spectrum rights at a fraction of the cost of other mobile spectrum. Good's insistence there had been proper disclosures to Harbinger "would have prompted a reasonable investor who had lost almost $2 billion, to investigate further," the judge said. The emails "flatly refute" the plaintiffs' allegation there was no reason to believe there was possible fraud by Apollo until 2015, in the two-year statute of limitations for bringing a complaint, Reed said. "The emails render it 'essentially undeniable' that by 2011, circumstances were such as to suggest to a person of ordinary intelligence the probability that he has been defrauded, prompting a duty of inquiry," he said. SkyTerra became part of LightSquared, which is now Ligado.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Embry Kidd is taking under advisement Local Access’ motion to compel Peerless Networks to respond to two interrogatories before Tuesday, said a Thursday notice in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Orlando (docket 6:17-cv-00236). Kidd directed Local Access to file a reply, no longer than 500 words, about the relevance of Peerless’ billing and revenue for long-distance termination services, including citations to the record and pleadings on prior discussions of long-distance termination services, if any. Local Access sued Peerless in 2017, alleging breach of contract and unjust enrichment related to homing tandem service traffic on Peerless’ network.

Plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone’s motion to compel in their fake ring tones lawsuit against T-Mobile is due by June 9, and T-Mobile’s opposition is due June 23, said a court order (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. T-Mobile’s motion to compel is due June 6 and Craigville’s opposition is due by June 19, it said. T-Mobile is alleged to have inserted fake ring tones instead of connecting calls to rural areas in the U.S. that have expensive routing fees. The fake tone would make the caller think the recipient didn’t answer, though the call hadn't been delivered. The class action was filed in 2019. T-Mobile agreed in a 2018 consent decree to pay $40 million to resolve an FCC investigation into whether it used the fake ring tones, and the plaintiffs argue some of the documents associated with that investigation are among materials T-Mobile wants kept under seal (see 2305170009). T-Mobile’s May 4 brief on discovery documents it designated as confidential under the protective order in the class action “fails to show that its confidentiality designations are valid,” said the plaintiffs’ response.

A fraud lawsuit over defective trackpads in HP Omen laptop computers was reassigned (docket 4:23-cv-02114) Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland after HP declined Tuesday to defend the class action before a magistrate judge (see 2305240005). Plaintiff Justin Davis alleges the trackpads on HP’s Omen line of laptops are so defective the computers are “rendered completely unusable” unless users buy an external mouse to navigate the screen.

HP declines to defend the Omen laptop fraud class action before a magistrate judge, said its declination form Tuesday (docket 4:23-cv-02114) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. Plaintiff Justin Davis alleges the trackpads on HP’s Omen line of laptops are so defective that the computers are “rendered completely unusable” unless users buy an external mouse to navigate the screen (see 2305030038).