23andMe filed a memorandum of law in support of a motion before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation Friday to transfer and consolidate 31 class actions, and others subsequently filed, involving similar facts or claims around an October data breach (see 23102500360). The genetic testing company announced Oct. 6 that it was hacked, compromising the names, gender, date of birth, genetic ancestry results, profile photos and geographical location of some customers who "recycled login credentials" with usernames and passwords that a threat actor may have accessed. The first action involving the incident, Santana et al v. 23andMe, was filed Oct. 9 in the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco, and 28 more followed there; two others were filed in the Northern District of Illinois: Gill v. 23andMe (8:23−cv−02387) and Bacus v. 23andMe (docket 1:23-cv-16828), said the memorandum (docket 3:23-cv-05464). On Nov. 30, Judge Edward Chen issued an order relating cases, finding 22 actions in the Northern District of California are related to the Santana action, said the memorandum. The last action, Rivers v. 23andMe Holding Co., was filed Dec. 15. The defendant expects additional lawsuits involving the same alleged security breach “given the ongoing filing of putative class actions over the last two-and-a-half months." Transfer is necessary to conserve court resources, reduce duplicative discovery and avoid inconsistent rulings if the actions proceed separately, the memorandum said.
Matthew Gorman’s class action against Sovos Compliance should remain in the In re MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation multidistrict litigation (MDL), said the plaintiff’s interested party response (docket 3083) Thursday to Sovos’ motion to vacate conditional transfer order 15 (CTO-15) before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Midland States Bank, a defendant in Gorman’s action, filed notice in support of Sovos’ motion the same day.
Nelson Estrada denies the allegations in defendant Aragon Advertising’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act counterclaim that he’s a common law fraudster, said Estrada’s answer Wednesday (docket 4:23-cv-03407) in U.S. District Court for Southern Texas in Houston. The plaintiff’s Sept. 12 class action alleged that Aragon inundated his cellphone with 37 “unauthorized and illegal” solicitation calls, to a number listed on the national do not call registry since June 2008 (see 2312070040). Aragon alleged in its Dec. 6 counterclaim that Estrada is a budding professional TCPA litigant who shops lawsuits around different law firms, and that he faked interest in Aragon’s products and services just to drive up the call count to extract a higher settlement payout for his “manufactured TCPA claim.” Estrada’s answer asks the court to enter judgment in his favor and to dismiss Aragon’s counterclaim with prejudice.
Bench Craft, a seller of golf course advertising to businesses throughout the U.S., denies that Marvin Shebroe is entitled to the injunctive and monetary relief he seeks for alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, said Bench Craft’s Dec. 22 answer (docket 8:23-cv-02690) to Shebroe’s Nov. 24 class action (see 2311270011). Shebroe alleges that Bench Craft makes telemarketing calls to consumers without their consent, including to phone numbers listed for years on the national do not call registry. But Bench Craft asserts that the plaintiff uses his cellphone number for his “business endeavors,” and that he provided that number to Bench Craft when he previously used its services to advertise his business, said the defendant’s answer. Shebroe also advertises his number on the website for his business, Audio Video Helpers, a home theater retailer and installer, and on that company’s Facebook page, it said. Shebroe has made his cellphone number available “to the public at large” to contact him at Audio Video Helpers, it said. After making his number available for those wishing to contact Audio Video Helpers, Shebroe can’t now “be permitted to claim” that the number is his personal cellphone number used for personal, residential purposes, it said. Shebroe “has waived his ability to make a claim under the TCPA” as a result of his decision to advertise his cellphone number as the number to be contacted at Audio Video Helpers, it said.
Michael Foulkes voluntarily dismissed without prejudice his Video Privacy Protection Act class action claims against Chegg, said his notice Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-23993) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami. Foulkes alleged in his Oct. 19 complaint that the educational services company tracked his video viewing history while he was on its website and then shared that history with Facebook (see 2310200013).
Two of three negligence class actions filed last week against Comcast over an October data breach also included software provider Citrix, which notified the internet service provider Oct. 10 of the vulnerability in one of its products Comcast uses. Comcast began notifying its customers of the breach Dec. 18 after conducting an investigation into the scope of the incident and determining there had been “unauthorized access” to some of its internal systems as a result of the breach, said the complaints.