Online dating company Match Group uses “powerful technologies and hidden algorithms” to design its websites with “addictive, game-like design features” that “lock users into a perpetual pay-to-play loop,” alleged six plaintiffs in a class action Wednesday (docket 3:24-cv-00888) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.
Home Depot allows Google to access, record, read and learn the contents of customers' calls via its Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI), in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), alleged a class action Wednesday (docket 2:24-cv-01253) against the two companies in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds for Eastern Michigan in Detroit ordered Carlos Delgadillo to show cause in writing by Feb. 21 why his Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action against automaker FCA US shouldn’t be dismissed for failure to prosecute, said the judge’s signed order Wednesday (docket 2:24-cv-10039). Failure to respond may result in the case's dismissal, said the order. Delgadillo alleges that FCA violates the TCPA by placing prerecorded calls without consent to a group of individuals for whom the message isn't applicable and who requested not to receive the calls (see 2401090001). While calls designed to notify consumers about airbag recalls for their Chrysler cars are important, FCA is calling "a whole host of individuals who never owned a car that the recall is relevant to," including Delgadillo in this case, he alleges.
Core Home Security, a security installation and monitoring company, violates the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Florida Telephone Solicitation Act by placing unwanted telemarketing calls to consumers who don’t want to receive them and gave the company no consent to be called, alleged Victoria Starr-Harris’ class action Wednesday (docket 0:24-cv-60250) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Fort Lauderdale. Starr-Harris' residential cellphone number has been listed on the national do not call registry since October 2016, yet she began receiving prerecorded telemarketing calls to that number on June 12 from Core, promoting its security monitoring services, said her complaint. At no point did the Davie, Florida, resident give the company her express written consent to be contacted, as the TCPA requires, it said. The company’s unsolicited phone calls and text messages caused her “actual harm,” including invasion of her privacy, aggravation, annoyance, intrusion on seclusion, trespass and conversion, it said. The calls also inconvenienced her and caused disruption to her daily life, it said. She estimates that she spent “numerous hours” investigating the unwanted phone calls, including how they obtained her number and who the defendant was, it said. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in its July 24 en banc decision in Drazen v. GoDaddy.com (docket 21-10199), held that plaintiffs have a concrete Article III injury under the TCPA with only a single unwanted call or text message from a defendant, said the complaint.
Paul Sapan’s Oct. 20 class action alleging that Shore Capital sells mortgage services via "cold calls" to residential phone numbers listed for years on the federal do not call registry (see 2310210002) should be dismissed for failure to state a claim, said Shore’s motion Tuesday (docket 8:23-cv-01974) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana. While Sapan’s complaint “makes particular (albeit inconsistent) allegations” regarding Capital Mortgage, it contains no allegations regarding Shore Capital, said the motion. Since there are no charging allegations against Shore Capital other than notes that Sapan attached to his complaint, and no allegation that substantively ties Shore Capital to Capital Mortgage, “there is no basis for liability of Shore Capital,” it said.
Though plaintiff Aaron Rapp’s cellphone number has been listed on the national do not call registry for almost 20 years, the National Agents Alliance made numerous unauthorized phone calls to that number for the purpose of soliciting insurance business, said Rapp’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Tuesday (docket1:24-cv-00068) in U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana in Fort Wayne. The alliance recruits, screens and trains independent contractors to sell insurance for various insurance carriers, said the complaint. It has been recognized as one of the most prominent independent marketing organizations in the U.S. and has sold more than $1.6 billion worth of life insurance policies to American consumers, Rapp's complaint said. But the alliance “has sought to grow its business by flagrantly disregarding the TCPA and its governing regulations,” said the complaint. Rapp didn’t provide the alliance with his cellphone number at any point in time, nor did the Indiana resident give permission for the alliance to make phone solicitations to him or to send or leave him telemarketing messages, it said. The alliance failed to establish and implement “reasonable practices and procedures” to effectively prevent phone solicitations to Rapp and other similarly situated persons, in violation of the TCPA’s implementing regulations, said the complaint. The alliance has “intentionally and repeatedly violated” the TCPA, and Rapp “properly alleges injuries in fact,” which are traceable to the alliance’s unlawful acts, “and are likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision,” it said.
The 14 plaintiffs in the first-filed copyright infringement suit against OpenAI in the Northern District of California seek to intervene and to dismiss the four actions against OpenAI and Microsoft filed subsequently in the Southern District of New York, said their motion Monday (docket 1:24-cv-00084). In the alternative, they seek to stay the four SDNY actions or transfer them to the NDCA, it said. The NDCA complaint was the first in the U.S. to allege that OpenAI committed direct copyright infringement when it made copies of the plaintiffs’ books without permission in order to train OpenAI’s language models, it said. The SDNY lawsuits are all “copycat cases,” said the motion. The subsequently filed SDNY actions are “strikingly similar” to the first-filed case, it said. Their claims “share common or overlapping theories of liability,” it said. OpenAI, in an apparent attempt to "undercut" the NDCA’s scheduling order, agreed to forego its motion to transfer the SDNY cases to NDCA, it said. By its “blatant forum shopping,” OpenAI is creating the likelihood, or certainty, of “inconsistent rulings in overlapping class actions and the attendant waste of judicial resources,” it said. “This is precisely the type of procedural gamesmanship the first-to-file rule was adopted to arrest,” it said. To avoid duplicative efforts, judicial waste and potentially disparate rulings, the SDNY should apply the first-to-file rule and dismiss, or in the alternative, stay or transfer the SDNY actions, it said.
Four class actions vs. Honeywell and two vs. M&T Bank were transferred to In Re: MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation (docket 3083), said conditional transfer order 31 (CTO-31) Tuesday from the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. The cases join over 200 actions involving Progress Software Corp.’s (PSC) May MOVEit file transfer software data breach that have been transferred to U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston and assigned to U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs. None of the six cases names PSC as a defendant. Also Tuesday, plaintiff Patrick Lew filed a notice of opposition (docket 4:24-cv-00532) to CTO-29, relating to Lew v. Medical Eye Services Inc. et al, pending in U.S. District Court for Northern California after removal from California state court. The Dec. 13 class action, which also names Blue Shield of California, pleads six causes of action for negligence, invasion of privacy and violations of the California Civil Code. Stays were lifted Tuesday on the remaining four cases in CTO-29, along with CTO-27. Plaintiff Alexandra Lardis dropped her claims against Columbia University involving the MOVEit data breach, said her notice of voluntary dismissal (docket 1:23-cv-10241) without prejudice Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Lardis moved to vacate CTO-23 Jan. 3 (see Ref:2401040007), saying her claims “materially differ” from those at issue in centralized actions in CTO-23. Lardis’ case “has nothing to do with the negligence of the defendants in the MOVEit action,” said her motion, which alleges Columbia breached its contractual obligations to her and class members regarding its handling of their private information.
Xfinity customers must provide personally identifiable information online before they can use Comcast's services, and they are entitled to “security" of that PII, said a class action Tuesday (docket 2:24-cv-00639) brought by a 15-year Comcast customer in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
SelectQuote markets Medicare supplemental insurance services through the use of prerecorded telemarketing calls, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged Jay Stannard in a class action Monday (docket 6:24-cv-00312) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Orlando. The Brevard County, Florida, resident also alleges that SelectQuote and its telemarketers use automated systems to make telemarketing calls into Florida, and that by doing so, SelectQuote also has violated the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act, said his complaint. At no point did Stannard consent to receive telemarketing calls regarding SelectQuote’s goods or services before receiving the prerecorded calls at issue, it said. Court records show that Stannard’s complaint is the 19th TCPA action brought against SelectQuote nationally since August 2019.