Jane Hart aims to hold Mr. Cooper Group mortgage company and parent Nationstar Mortgage accountable for the harms it caused, and will continue to cause, to nearly 15 million individuals affected by a “massive and preventable” Oct. 31 data breach, said the Tennessee resident’s class action Friday (docket 3:24-cv-00093) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas.
Greg Bostard, the former Comcast utility pole worker who wants Verizon to pay for his medical monitoring due to his 29 years of exposure to Verizon’s toxic lead cables (see 2308240005), amended his class action Friday to assert that he’s not seeking personal injury damages but rather relief for the “present economic injury” he suffers by having to pay for his own lead-poisoning tests.
United Insurance Professionals, which sells policies on behalf of several insurance companies, made multiple telemarketing calls to residential phone numbers, despite their presence on the national do not call registry, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged Kelly Pinn’s class action Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00127) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. Pinn, a Texas resident, never consented to receive the calls, said the complaint. Her number has been listed on the registry since February 2009, yet United phoned her at least 17 times since Dec. 11 to sell her final expense insurance, and did so using various illegally spoofed caller ID numbers, it said. Pinn’s cellphone number is used for residential purposes and isn’t associated with a business, nor is it associated with a phone service sold for business use, it said. Pinn and members of the class have been harmed “because their privacy has been violated, they were annoyed and harassed, and, in some instances, they may have been charged for incoming calls,” it said. The calls also occupied their cellphone lines, “rendering them unavailable for legitimate communication,” it said.
U.S. District Judge Matthew McFarland for Southern Ohio in Cincinnati conditionally dismissed with prejudice plaintiff Amy Faler's individual Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims against defendant Dailylook, said the judge’s signed order Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-00647). Any of the remaining claims of Faler's proposed class are dismissed without prejudice, said the order. Any of the parties may, upon good cause shown within 30 days, move to reopen the action if settlement isn’t consummated, said the order. The parties told the court in a Dec. 8 notice that they had reached a settlement (see 2312110014). Dailylook, a personal styling subscription service, engages in unsolicited text-messaging to promote its goods and services, and continues to text consumers after they opt out of its solicitations, alleged Faler’s Oct. 5 TCPA class action.
Michael Aram Retail, a home furnishings company headquartered in Florida that sells a wide variety of goods, uses aggressive marketing to push its products “without regards to consumers’ rights” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged plaintiff Dionne Hardiman’s class action Thursday (docket 9:24-cv-80029) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in West Palm Beach. Hardiman seeks injunctive relief to halt the retailer’s illegal conduct, “which has resulted in the invasion of privacy, harassment, aggravation, and disruption of the daily life of thousands of individuals,” said her complaint. The Montcalm County, Michigan, resident also seeks statutory damages on behalf of herself and members of the class, plus “any other available legal or equitable remedies,” it said. Beginning Nov. 27, the defendant sent or caused to be sent multiple telemarketing text messages to Hardiman’s cellphone, to a number listed on the national do not call registry since Oct. 23, it said. At no point in time did Hardiman provide the defendant with her express written consent to be contacted, and she has no existing business relationship with the company, it said.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher for Maryland in Baltimore set a May 28 discovery deadline in Erin Wilcox and Connie Slingbaum's class action to halt the alleged Telephone Consumer Protection Act wrongdoing of MarketPro Homebuyers, a real estate marketing company and leads generation business (see 2308300002), said the judge’s signed scheduling order Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-02364). May 28 also is the parties’ deadline for filing their joint status report, said the order. The judge will convene a scheduling conference after the status report is filed, it said. Wilcox and Slingbaum allege that MarketPro bombards consumers whose numbers are listed on the national do not call registry with text-message solicitations seeking to buy their homes for cash “as is,” but the plaintiffs say they aren’t, and weren’t, interested in selling their homes and that they didn't consent to receiving the texts.
Jan. 26 is the newly revised deadline for defendants Microsoft and OpenAI to answer the Authors Guild’s Dec. 5 amended copyright class action (see 2312060054), said an order signed Thursday by U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein for Southern New York in Manhattan. Friday previously was the defendants’ deadline for answering the complaint. The guild and 17 authors, including John Grisham and Scott Turow, allege that Microsoft and OpenAI copied their works “wholesale, without permission or consideration.” The defendants are then alleged to have fed those copyrighted works into their large language models, algorithms designed to output “human-seeming text responses” to users’ prompts and queries. The guild and the authors allege that Microsoft and OpenAI are guilty of “systematic theft on a mass scale.”
Noah Seiler voluntarily dismissed a negligence class action (docket 1:23-cv-12594) against Athene Annuity and Life Co. involving the MOVEit file transfer software data breach, said a Thursday notice (docket 3083) in In Re: MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston. Individual and putative class claims are dismissed without prejudice, it said. In the September lawsuit, Seiler sued the defendant for a failure to properly secure his personally identifiable information (PII) in Progress Software Corp.’s (PSC) May MOVEit software data breach. Athene provided Seiler’s PII to Pension Benefits Information, which used PSC’s file transfer software, the complaint said.
The parties in a privacy class action weren’t able to resolve the case in mediation, said a notification Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-04953) of a status hearing in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Plaintiffs plan to amend the complaint by Feb. 1. Defendants ByteDance and its CapCut videoediting app will file a responsive pleading by Feb. 29, said the filing. Defendants plan to file a Rule 12(b)(2) motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and possibly a Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, it said. If a motion is filed, plaintiffs’ response is due by April 16 with defendants’ reply due May 14, it said. Plaintiffs Evelia Rodriguez, Erikka Wilson and Wilson’s 14-year-old daughter, A.N., sued the defendants in September (see 2309280020) for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the California Unfair Competition Law and the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act. ByteDance and TikTok “unjustly profit from the secret harvesting of a massive array of private and personally identifiable CapCut user data and content,” alleged the complaint. They use the information for targeted advertising, for making improvements to their AI technologies and for bolstering consumer demand for their other goods and services, it said. The complaint also alleges A.N. was able to open a CapCut account without her mother's consent.
Healthcare platform provider Navvis & Co. failed to protect Richard Lilly’s personally identifiable information (PII) and personal health information (PHI) in a “preventable” cyberattack, alleged Lilly's class action Thursday (docket 4:24-cv-00063) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri in St. Louis.