U.S. District Judge Michael Watson for Southern Ohio in Columbus overruled the objections of defendant Vivek Ramaswamy to a magistrate judge’s order granting plaintiff Thomas Grant’s motion for limited expedited discovery in his Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action against the former Republican presidential candidate (see 2404050013), said Watson’s signed opinion and order Friday (docket 2:24-cv-00281). Grant sought the discovery to preserve relevant records of calls that Ramaswamy’s campaign made to him and his putative class members to solicit their participation in his telephonic town halls. Ramaswamy had asked the court to set aside the order as “clearly erroneous and contrary to law.” But the magistrate judge rightly found there was good cause for granting the discovery motion, said the opinion and order. Though this isn’t a case involving patent infringement or unfair competition, “all the other factors” favor plaintiff Grant, it said. He persuasively argues that there’s a risk that evidence will be lost, it said. Grant’s counsel "represents" that in other TCPA cases, some of the companies that make calls on behalf of others have policies to destroy call logs within a few months, it said. "Of course, that does not prove the evidence in this case will be lost," but Grant "has presented a sufficient basis for concluding that there is a risk that the evidence will be lost," it said. That's "enough for this factor to favor allowing early discovery," it said. Ramaswamy also would suffer “little prejudice” from discovery, it said. The only thing he has to do is give Grant the name of the dialer that the campaign used, it said. The scope of the requested discovery is narrow, it said. Indeed, the plaintiff asks only for the identity of the dialer and for permission to subpoena call logs from the dialer. The request is limited to only what he needs to preserve the call transmission logs, and that factor also “supports allowing early discovery,” it said. On Ramaswamy’s argument that the magistrate judge erred by ruling on a discovery dispute before resolving his jurisdictional challenge, that argument fails because the court has subject-matter jurisdiction over the case, said the opinion and order. On the former candidate's objections to the magistrate judge allowing Grant to serve a third party with a subpoena, Ramaswamy “lacks standing to raise this objection,” it said. He offers no argument that he has “any claim of privilege to the information sought by the subpoena,” it said.
Priority Concepts inundated plaintiff James Shelton with at least 20 unwanted calls between Nov. 15 and Dec. 21 in an attempt to sell him employee retention credit tax preparation services and “anticipation loans,” alleged Shelton’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Friday (docket 2:24-cv-02581) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Central Islip. At no point did Shelton consent to receiving telemarketing calls from Priority before receiving the automated calls at issue, said the complaint. The Pennsylvania resident put his phone number on the national do not call registry in 2015, more than eight years before he began receiving the calls at issue, it said. The plaintiff has never been a Priority customer, and he “explicitly requested that the calls from Priority stop on multiple occasions,” including via a Dec. 8 email to the company, and on a phone call he received that same day, it said. The calls were unwanted, “nonconsensual encounters,” said the complaint. Shelton and the class have been harmed by Priority’s acts “because their privacy has been violated and they were annoyed and harassed,” it said. The calls also occupied their phone lines, storage space and bandwidth, “rendering them unavailable for legitimate communication, including while driving, working, and performing other critical tasks,” it said.
Wyteria Trimble, Stefanie Garcia and Olivia Georgiady dismissed without prejudice their negligence class action against Paycom Payroll, involving the Progress Software May MOVEit data breach, said the plaintiffs' notice (docket 5:24-cv-00154) of voluntary dismissal Thursday in U.S. District Court for Western Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. Trimble alleges in the Feb. 8 class action that following the MOVEit file transfer software data breach in May, an unknown user gained access to her Paycom account numerous times, changed her direct deposit information and stole her paychecks. Garcia said two days after she was supposed to receive her direct deposit, May 17, an unknown person accessed her Paycom account and changed her routing information, resulting in her direct deposit routing “to an unknown account.” An unknown user gained access to Georgiady’s Paycom account on May 28 and changed her direct deposit information, resulting in 90% of her May and June direct-deposit paychecks “being sent to an unknown account,” said the complaint. Paycom never informed the plaintiffs their accounts had been breached, the complaint said.
Cain King of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, provided his name, Social Security number and other personally identifiable information (PII) to SouthState Bank, which failed to keep it confidential and to protect it from unauthorized access and disclosure, alleged a class action Friday (docket 8:24-cv-00849) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa.
Pewaukee, Wisconsin, “repeatedly informed” AT&T of the “problems, difficulties and failures” it had using Simplifi Connect II routers on AT&T’s FirstNet network to communicate with its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, said plaintiff Coppe Healthcare Solutions in its memorandum of law (docket 2:24-cv-00088) in opposition to AT&T’s motion to dismiss a negligence suit.
Notices of appearance in In Re: Apple Inc. Smartphone Antitrust Litigation are due on or before April 17, said a text-only revised briefing schedule Friday at the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. In their briefs, parties should address what steps they have taken to pursue alternatives to centralization including engaging in informal coordination of discovery and scheduling, said the order.
Plaintiff Heather Lee Minor and defendant Apollo Interactive have entered into a written settlement agreement providing for the filing of a stipulation of dismissal of the case by April 24, said their joint status report Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-00355) in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida in Tallahassee. Minor’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act Aug. 10 class action alleged that Apollo Interactive, an advertising agency that provides lead generation services to businesses in the insurance industry, inundates U.S. consumers with unsolicited texts through a program called Apollo Alerts, to numbers listed on the national do not call registry (see 2308110002).
Plaintiff Cindy Luchinske and defendant Apptness Media Group stipulate to the dismissal with prejudice of Luchinske’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action claims, with each party to bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs, said their stipulated motion Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-00267) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington in Spokane. Luchinske’s putative class claims are dismissed without prejudice, said the motion. Luchinske’s complaint alleged that Apptness “bombards unsuspecting consumers” nationally “with annoying automated texts." She alleged that Apptness’ campaigns are an effort to collect consumers’ names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and other personal contact information so it can sell “that same information to other companies."
Defendant Vivek Ramaswamy disagrees with U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly Jolson’s April 2 order granting plaintiff Thomas Grant’s motion for limited expedited discovery, and asks that the court set aside the order because it’s “clearly erroneous and contrary to law,” according to Ramaswamy’s objection Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00281) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) is moving with apparent speed to corral the growing volume of AT&T data breach class actions into a single, centralized proceeding.