The American Civil Rights Project supports the 20 industry petitioners arguing that the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court should vacate the FCC’s digital discrimination broadband rule since it runs afoul of the law and isn’t based on clear congressional intent (see 2404230032), according to the nonprofit’s amicus brief. It was filed Wednesday in docket 24-1179.
Vermont’s net neutrality law seems in good shape legally following two significant, late-April decisions by the FCC and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said experts on the statute. ISP groups must decide what to do with their 2018 lawsuit at U.S. District Court of Vermont now that the case can resume following the 2nd Circuit ruling.
FullStory’s motion to dismiss Jane Doe’s third amended complaint (TAC) “turns on a false narrative created by selectively ignoring important facts alleged,” said Doe’s opposition (docket 3:23-cv-00059) to the data analytics firm’s motion to dismiss the TAC Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.
A Fort Worth, Texas-based company that claimed to have favorable contracts with electricity providers to operate cryptocurrency asset mining machines profitably lied to investors about how it would operate the machines, alleged the SEC Wednesday in a securities fraud complaint Wednesday (docket 4:24-cv-00365) in U.S. District Court for North Texas in Fort Worth. The suit names as defendants Geosyn Mining and founders CEO Caleb Ward of Smyrna, Georgia, and Chief Operating Officer George McNutt of Weatherford, Texas.
The SEC's 3-2 vote Feb. 29 finalizing a new rule to expand the definition of the statutory term “dealer” under the Exchange Act is “unclear in ways that squarely conflict with the statute,” said a complaint Tuesday (docket 4:24-cv-00361) filed by the Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas and the Blockchain Association in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.
Section 60506 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “should have been as unremarkable as it was uncontroversial,” said a brief Monday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from 20 industry and business petitioners, including CTIA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in support of their 16 consolidated challenges to the FCC’s Nov. 20 digital discrimination order (see 240319004).
In their April 12 opposition to the NBCUniversal and Peacock motion to dismiss their first amended complaint (see 2404160001), plaintiffs Amma Afriyie and Roy Campbell “present arguments wholly divorced from the cases they cite,” said the defendants’ reply Friday (docket 1:23-cv-09433) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of the motion to dismiss.
T-Mobile’s 2020 Sprint buy “fundamentally changed the structure of the retail wireless market,” causing reduced competition and higher prices, said the seven AT&T and Verizon customer plaintiffs who seek to vacate the transaction on antitrust grounds. Their answering brief Thursday (docket 24-8013) in the 7th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court opposes T-Mobile’s petition for interlocutory review to reverse the district court’s denial of its motion to dismiss their T-Mobile/Sprint challenge for lack of antitrust standing (see 2404090059).
Xfinity Mobile attempted for a third time to assert civil conspiracy and trademark claims against phone reseller GlobalguruTech and owner Jakob Zahara but “failed to address the deficiencies in these claims this Court has pointed out twice before,” said the defendant’s response (docket 2:22-cv-01950) to the plaintiff’s motion for leave to file a second amended complaint (SAC) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix. Xfinity's Nov. 16, 2022, complaint alleges GGT, Zahara and their co-conspirators are handset traffickers who exploit financial incentives to acquire phones by using unlawful methods to circumvent the procedures put in place to protect Xfinity Mobile and its legitimate customers -- and then resell the phones for substantial profit. On June 14, a court order granted in part GGT’s motion to dismiss and dismissed without prejudice counts four, 10, 11 and 12, said the response. Xfinity Mobile filed an amended complaint July 7, and because it again alleged the same claims “with very few changes,” the court dismissed those counts, too, in January, said the response. Now, “with very few material changes,” Xfinity asserts the counts again, it said. The civil conspiracy claim, count four, fails because the SAC “still contains insufficient factual matter to indicate a conspiracy is plausible,” the response said. Also, Zahara and his limited-liability customers are still the only named defendants in the lawsuit, and Zahara “can’t have a conspiracy with himself,” it said. The remaining trademark infringement claims fail because GGT’s use of the Xfinity logo “still falls within the parameters of nominative fair use,” it said. "There is nothing new in the proposed Second Amended Complaint that should change the Court’s prior analysis of these claims."
A 3rd U.S. Circuit Appeals Court panel of Judges Michael Chagares, David Porter and Anthony Scirica affirmed the district court's July 18 decision dismissing Andrew Perrong’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act case against the Democratic Committee of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for failure to state a claim (see 2308090033), said Chagares’ opinion Wednesday (docket 23-2415).