A former Comcast utility pole worker's second amended complaint “suffers from the same deficiencies” as his original complaint and his first amended complaint, said Verizon’s motion to dismiss Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-08564) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Camden. The former worker, Greg Bostard, seeks to force Verizon to pay for his medical monitoring after years of exposure to Verizon’s toxic lead cables.
Great Lakes Home Remodeling engages in “offensive marketing practices” that violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act when it makes telemarketing calls soliciting its roofing products and services, alleged Adam Besso’s class action Wednesday (docket 3:24-cv-00688) in U.S. District Court for Western Ohio in Toledo. Great Lakes calls individuals whose numbers are listed on the national do not call registry, and those who have requested not to be called and to be added to the company’s internal do not call list, said Besso’s complaint. The Pontiac, Michigan, plaintiff listed his cellphone number on the national DNC registry in April 2017, yet he began receiving marketing calls Dec. 18 from Great Lakes or representatives on its behalf. Solicitations were for roofing products and services, the complaint said. During these calls, Besso would inform Great Lakes that he wasn’t interested, it said. Besso estimates that Great Lakes phoned him at least nine times between Dec. 18 and March 21, said the complaint. After the March 21 call, he phoned Great Lakes at the number displayed on his caller ID and demanded that the company stop calling him, it said. But Great Lakes failed to honor Besso’s March 21 request, and even phoned him multiple times that day, it said. The plaintiff repeated his do not call demand March 26, yet at least 11 more calls followed between March 27 and Wednesday, the day he filed his class action, said the complaint. Great Lakes’ TCPA violations were negligent, or they were knowing and willful, it said. Besso and his potential class members were “damaged” by the violations because their privacy was “improperly invaded,” it said. Great Lakes’ calls also “temporarily seized and trespassed upon the use of their phones, and they were forced to divert attention away from other activities to address the unwanted calls,” it said. The complaint alleges that the defendant uses automated systems to make phone calls to hundreds, if not thousands of consumers across the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes for Western Missouri in Kansas City granted T-Mobile’s unopposed motion to extend to May 8 its deadline to answer the plaintiffs’ March 8 consolidated consumer class action complaint in the multidistrict litigation arising from T-Mobile’s 2022 data breach (see 2403110012), said the judge’s signed order Wednesday (docket 4:23-md-03073). The plaintiffs now have until July 8 to respond to any T-Mobile motion to dismiss or compel their claims to arbitration, and T-Mobile’s reply in support of their motions is due 30 days later, said the order. The class action alleges that T-Mobile understands it has an “enormous responsibility” to protect its customers’ personal information against cyberattacks, but that it “completely failed” to meet those obligations.
Samsung and plaintiff Antonio Lewis agreed that Lewis’ foldable smartphone fraud claims should be dismissed with prejudice, with each party bearing its costs and attorneys’ fees, said their stipulation of dismissal Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-10882) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Lewis of Charlottesville, Virginia, alleged in his December class action that Samsung’s advertised claim that its Z Fold 3 smartphone can be folded and unfolded at least 200,000 times -- the number of such actions a user would perform in five years -- is based on “flawed” testing methodology and “not representative of real-world usage” (see 2301030027).
Although the plaintiffs in a negligence class action vs. ESO Solutions over a September data breach timely responded to the medical software company’s motion to strike class allegations, their response to its March 28 motion to dismiss is “past due,” said U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman for Western Texas in Austin Wednesday. Pitman ordered (docket 1:23-cv-01557) the plaintiffs in In Re: ESO Solutions Inc. Breach Litigation to file a response to the motion to dismiss by Monday. Plaintiffs Steven Guiffre, Billy Love, George Simpson, Jamie Thomas, Deborah Todd and Robert Day called ESO’s March 26 motion to strike class allegations “premature and meritless” in their April 9 motion to strike allegations (see 2404100041). The Sept. 17 data breach allegedly affected about 2.7 million individuals whose personally identifiable information and personal health information was compromised when an unauthorized actor gained access to the software company's network and computer systems.
Virtual private network company Surfshark violates California’s Automatic Renewal Law (ARL) when it fails to present subscription terms “in a clear and conspicuous manner,” a class action (docket 5:24-cv-02299) alleged Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose.
The four plaintiff-appellees who allege that Ford duped them into buying or leasing its vehicles with inoperable 3G modems following AT&T’s “decommissioning” of its 3G network in 2022 should have submitted their claims to arbitration “as provided by the individual arbitration agreements they each entered into,” said the automaker’s opening brief Wednesday (docket 23-3966) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Straight Marketing, a New Jersey company that markets and sells internet search engine optimization services, made unsolicited prerecorded telemarketing calls to Andrew Colon and others without their prior express consent, alleged Colon’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Monday (docket 3:24-cv-00388) in U.S. District Court for Western North Carolina in Charlotte. The North Carolina resident and all members of the class have been harmed by the defendant’s acts “because their privacy has been violated and they were annoyed and harassed,” said the complaint. The calls also occupied the class members' phone lines, “rendering them unavailable for legitimate communication, including while driving, working, and performing other critical tasks,” it said.
T-Mobile is waging a telemarketing campaign in which it sends text messages marketing its services to numbers on the national do not call registry, in “plain violation” of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged Rudy Sepulveda’s class action Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle. The Torrance, California, resident opted out of text messages from T-Mobile on Jan. 24 by replying “stop” to one of its text message solicitations, said the complaint. Yet the carrier and its agents, in direct violation of the TCPA, “contacted and continue to contact individuals,” including Sepulveda, “who have requested that contact cease,” it said. The defendant received at least 10 T-Mobile text solicitations between Feb. 1 and April 9, after he requested that T-Mobile no longer contact him with those messages, it said. T-Mobile, or someone acting on its behalf, violated Sepulveda’s privacy by sending those unwanted telemarketing text messages, “and they constitute a nuisance as they are annoying and harassing,” it said.
U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner for Central California in Los Angeles denied the motion to remand of a Jane Doe plaintiff who sued PHE, owner of adult products website Adam & Eve, for privacy violations, said his order (docket 2:24-cv-01065) Monday. Doe filed a class action complaint against PHE Jan. 3, alleging that after she used the Adam & Eve website, the company disclosed her personal sexual information and IP address to Google via Google Analytics without her consent. Doe originally filed the action against PHE in Central California district court Sept. 25. The case was dismissed and Doe then added Google to the lawsuit and filed in state court; Google removed the case to district court in February (see 2403110004). The defendants argued that Doe didn’t meet the local controversy exception's three requirements for a district court to decline federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA): that two-thirds of the putative class are California citizens; that the principal injuries from the alleged conduct were incurred in California; and that no similar class actions have been filed vs. the defendant in the past three years. The court disagreed with Doe’s contention that the class was comprised solely of California residents. On the injuries question, Doe failed to convince the court to depart from the “numerous California district courts which have routinely held that artificially restricting a nationwide injury to appear purely Californian in nature does not warrant remand”; therefore, the principal injuries requirement wasn't met, said the order. In a separate order, Klausner dismissed Doe’s complaint, saying she can refile within seven days of the order “with her true legal name.” In response to the court’s order to show cause for proceeding by pseudonym, Doe argued that she would otherwise be forced to publicly reveal her purchase history, which would reveal her sexual practices, preferences and orientation, which could lead to public ridicule and social stigmatization, said the order. Doe’s purchase history may subject her to “severe ridicule and stigma so as to outweigh public interest,” but that harm can be avoided “simply by obtaining a protective order and filing that information under seal,” the order said.