The Foundation for Moral Law, a religious liberties nonprofit, thinks that the federal government’s handling of COVID-19 information “has led to unprecedented infringements on our fundamental freedoms,” said its U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief Monday (docket 23-1062) in Changizi v. Department of Health and Human Services.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York in Brooklyn granted plaintiffs Dean and Michelle Nasca’s motion to remand their product liability and negligence lawsuit against TikTok, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, MTA Long Island Railroad and the Town of Islip, Long Island, to Suffolk County Supreme Court for lack of jurisdiction, his Friday order said (docket 24-cv-2061). The Nascas sued TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in March 2023 after their 16-year-old son, Chase, committed suicide on Feb. 18, 2022, after the platform allegedly directed him to adult accounts with "thousands" of “highly depressive, violent, self-harm and suicide themed content." Chase walked through an unfenced portion of Long Island Railroad train tracks, texted a friend “I’m gonna go” and was crushed by a Metropolitan Transit Authority commuter train, the lawsuit alleges. TikTok previously removed the action to federal court, and the Brooklyn court remanded to state court for lack of jurisdiction, said the order. At the time of removal, TikTok removed the cases “inclusive of the MTA Defendants -- there was no other case to remove,” and the removed case “therefore included non-diverse, forum state defendants,” the order said. On Thursday, the Nascas filed a memorandum in support of their motion to vacate conditional transfer order 30 (CTO-30) before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation currently pending before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California in Oakland (docket 3047). TikTok included the Nascas' case in a notice of potential tagalong actions to MDL 3047, and the JPML conditionally transferred it to the MDL in CTO-30. Alternatively, the Nascas requested that the panel abstain from rendering a decision on the motion to vacate until the Eastern District of New York issued an order on the plaintiffs' pending motion to remand.
A John Doe defendant living in Taiwan entered into a contract with fine art broker Sotheby’s and consigned three pieces of fine art nonfungible tokens (NFTs) created by the artist Beeple that were stolen from plaintiff Augusto Reyes, alleged Reyes' fraud complaint Tuesday (docket 2:24-cv-03371) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles.
Defendants TikTok and ByteDance petitioned the court to deny plaintiffs Dean and Michelle Nasca's motion to remand to state court their case vs. the social media company, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Railroad and Town of Islip, New York, in a Friday letter (2:24-cv-02061) from counsel Kristen Fournier of King & Spaulding to U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. The Nascas sued TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in March 2023 after their son, Chase, died by suicide after TikTok allegedly directed him to adult accounts with “highly depressive, violent, self-harm and suicide themed content." The Nascas refiled the action in New York state court, joining for the first time the MTA defendants. TikTok removed the case from New York State Supreme Court in Suffolk County to U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Central Islip April 13, 2023, on the basis that the MTA defendants were improperly joined. In his order remanding the case, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York said TikTok could seek state court severance and then seek removal of the case again for transfer to a Social Media MDL naming the major social media companies in the Northern District of California. The Nascas filed an opposition this month to conditional transfer order 30 that would have transferred the case to In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Liability Litigation (see 2404110050). If the court grants the Nascas’ motion for remand to state court, the defendants request oral argument that addresses the "complex procedural history and posture of this case," plus the novel arguments raised in the Nascas’ reply related to an administrative change to the notice of removal, the letter said. Also to be addressed is the “unsupported representation that the New York Supreme Court was 'unwittingly’ divested of jurisdiction” at the time it issued its order for show cause, the letter said.
Anthony Kamel hasn’t provided “sufficient factual evidence” to support the assertion that his cellphone number is used for residential purposes, said Albertsons’ memorandum of points and authorities Thursday (docket 8:24-cv-00270) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana in support of its motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s Feb. 8 Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action for failure to state a claim. Kamel alleges that Albertsons, “by means contrary” to the TCPA, contacted his cellphone number multiple times with telemarketing text messages using an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) even after he told the supermarket chain to stop contacting him (see 2402090007). But the defendant argues that Kamel’s complaint relies on “conclusory allegations” that his cellphone number is residential, that he’s the cellphone’s account holder and that he’s the regular user of the number, said its memorandum. “Such threadbare allegations lack the necessary factual underpinning to demonstrate the number’s residential use” and defeat Kamel’s residential phone number claim under the TCPA, it said. The plaintiff’s claim is “further undermined” by publicly available information, said the memorandum. The subject number is listed on a publicly accessible website and social media platform as the contact number for Kamel’s jewelry business, “indicating its use for business purposes and inviting public inquiries related to jewelry -- a blatant contradiction that the number is residential,” it said. Kamel’s Telemarketing Sales Rule claim likewise fails because he doesn’t allege he suffered the “requisite amount of damages to state a private right of action,” said the memorandum. The Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, the statute under which the TSR was promulgated, requires that a plaintiff plead at least $50,000 in actual damages to be entitled to a private right of action for violations of the TSR, it said. Kamel’s allegations also “belie an essential element of the claims” that he was contacted using an ATDS as defined under the TCPA, said the memorandum. Under binding 9th Circuit authority, to qualify as an ATDS, equipment “must randomly or sequentially generate telephone numbers to be dialed,” it said. Equipment that "merely dials numbers" obtained in a non-random, non-sequential way, such as when a plaintiff provides his number to a defendant, is not an ATDS, it said. Kamel admits that he received text messages from Albertsons only after he provided his number to an Albertsons cashier, “thus establishing that Albertsons did not contact him using an ATDS,” it said. Even if the court doesn’t dismiss Kamel’s complaint in its entirety, it should dismiss his requests for declaratory and injunctive relief, because he doesn’t allege “any continuing TCPA violations or the threat of future harm or otherwise allege that money damages are an inadequate remedy at law,” it said.
Software services company Syndio provided Twitter with all the services it invoiced the company for under a master cloud services agreement (MSA), but the social media company breached the agreement by failing to timely pay recent invoices, alleged a breach of contract complaint (docket 3:24-cv-02316) Thursday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. An Oct. 29 MSA between the two companies sets out terms of the three-year agreement under which Syndio would provide its PayEQ and PayFinder software and support services. Twitter paid the first annual invoice in November 2021, the complaint said. After Elon Musk bought the company in October 2022, amid Musk’s “extreme belt-tightening that amounted to requiring nearly everyone to whom it owes money to sue,” Twitter stopped paying rent on some of its offices and “stopped paying several vendors whose services it was still using,” the complaint said. Syndio invoiced Twitter on Nov. 3, 2022, for $129,750, due on Jan. 2, 2023, and on Nov. 2, 2023, for $129,750, due Jan. 2, 2024, the complaint said. The plaintiff provided all services due, didn’t receive complaints from Twitter, and Twitter never terminated the MSA, it said. Syndio has corresponded with its remaining contacts at the company, but Twitter and X have “offered no justification for not paying,” it said. The Seattle-based company seeks compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, costs of the lawsuit and pre- and post-judgment interest.
The court shouldn't grant Zuania Vazquez-Padilla’s motion to stay discovery in a fraud complaint over Facebook content moderation, said defendant Cognizant Technology Solutions’ opposition (docket 8:23-cv-02607) Thursday in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. Discovery in Vazquez-Padilla’s case would unfairly prolong stays of discovery in two other matters that are “tangentially-related arbitrations,” it said. The plaintiff noted in her motion that the arbitrators stayed discovery until discovery proceeds in her case and argued that staying discovery in her case would “'delay discovery’" in the arbitrations and prevent those victims from “obtaining timely justice,” said the filing. Vazquez-Padilla’s response suggests that Cognizant and the court’s prior stays “are to blame for the arbitration plaintiffs’ inability to obtain 'timely justice,'” said the opposition. That argument “cannot be farther from the truth,” it said, saying discovery originally proceeded in the arbitrations as a matter of course until Vazquez-Padilla’s counsel “intentionally violated protective orders the arbitrators had entered by using confidential discovery material” from arbitrations in Aguilo et al. v. Cognizant Technology Solutions, it said. Discovery is stayed in the arbitrations because of Vazquez-Padilla’s counsel’s “intentional misconduct,” and the parties’ subsequent agreement to continue the stays, it said. “If anything,” said the opposition, plaintiff’s counsel’s “attempt to take advantage of his intentional discovery violations (again) to avoid a stay is yet another reason a discovery stay is particularly warranted here.” Vazquez-Padilla worked as a content moderator for Cognizant, which previously provided that service for Facebook. Its content moderators reviewed postings on Facebook to determine whether they violated the social media platform’s terms of use. Vazquez-Padilla claims reviewing graphic content caused her to develop psychological injuries.
The “speculative theory” behind the censorship complaint brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and the Daily Wire and Federalist media outlets “cannot establish standing as a matter of law,” said the State Department’s reply memorandum Wednesday (docket 6:23-cv-00609) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Tyler in support of its March 25 motion to dismiss. Paxton and the media outlets allege that the State Department, through its Global Engagement Center, "is actively intervening" to render "disfavored" press outlets unprofitable by funding the marketing and promotion of "censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press" (see 2312060043). Named as defendants are Secretary of State Antony Blinken and five other State Department officials. The media plaintiffs show “no concrete, certainly impending injury-in-fact as required for prospective injunctive relief,” said the reply memorandum. Moreover, any such injury “would depend on the independent actions of third parties and is therefore not traceable” to the defendants or redressable by the court, it said. As for Texas, none of the alleged conduct interferes with its enforcement of HB-20, the state’s social media content moderation law (see 2401180048), said the reply memorandum. Even if it did, Texas isn’t currently enforcing HB-20, and this litigation “will not change that reality,” it said.
Pinterest recruited a research scientist and convinced him through “false representations” to quit his “stable employment” to bring his specialized knowledge of real-time bidding to the social media and image-sharing company, alleged a fraud complaint Wednesday (docket 24CV435463) in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Local resident Seyed Ziaemohseni interviewed at Pinterest in April 2022 to discuss a senior-level technical position in the company’s “struggling real-time bidding advertising system,” said the complaint. In subsequent meetings, Ziaemohseni emphasized that his background was in research and data, and that he isn’t a traditional software engineer, the complaint said. He explained he wasn’t looking to switch careers to become a software engineer working in Java programming language and that he didn’t have any “meaningful experience” with the programming language in the 16 years since he worked with it as a student. Ziaemohseni was told the senior-level position would involve mentoring junior team members working on the company’s real-time bidding platform, that he would not be required to write “production-level Java code himself” and that he would have a support team to do that for him, the complaint said. Over several months, the plaintiff went through seven rounds of interviews at Pinterest, with two concentrating on software engineering skills. Though he “resoundingly failed” one of the software engineering interviews due to his lack of experience in the field -- and that was making it difficult to get him approved for hire -- Ziaemohseni's interviewers told him they were talking to senior leadership to convince them to hire him on his expertise in real-time bidding, it said. They asked him not to start conversations with any other companies in the meantime, it said. Pinterest extended an offer to Ziaemohseni as a senior software engineer, he resigned from his previous job, and he took the Pinterest position in October, it said. The scope of the job turned out to be “vastly different” from the one he was expected to fill, it said. Despite having successfully launched a new control algorithm in March 2023, “with everything implemented in Java by himself,” Ziaemohseni received a negative assessment the next month due to “performance deficiencies” with development of Java code, the complaint said. The assessment “severely increased Mr. Ziaemohseni’s work-related stress and anxiety and took a toll on his emotional wellbeing, causing him to seek mental health treatment for the first time,” the complaint said. The plaintiff’s “alleged Java-related performance deficiencies” were addressed again in September, when he was given the choice to accept a monthlong “Corrective Action Plan” or separate from the company, the complaint said. Ziaemohseni chose to leave, and his final day of employment was Nov. 3, it said. The plaintiff is suing Pinterest for promissory fraud and intentional and negligent misrepresentation. He seeks compensatory, punitive, incidental and consequential damages, plus legal expenses and costs, the complaint said. Pinterest didn't comment Thursday.
T-Mobile seeks the dismissal of the class action in which five plaintiffs challenge the lawfulness of T-Mobile’s terms of use and their prohibitions against expressing negative comments online about the company or its goods and services (see 2401260042), said its motion Friday (docket 2:24-cv-00700) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. T-Mobile concurrently filed a motion to compel the pro se plaintiffs’ claims to arbitration. T-Mobile filed both motions at the same time because, while the plaintiffs’ arbitration agreements should be enforced, the plaintiffs’ claims “are so fundamentally flawed that they cannot survive regardless of the venue,” said the motion. “For the sake of expedience and efficiency,” the defendant sets forth all the reasons that the plaintiffs “fail to state a single viable claim for relief against T-Mobile,” it said. Whether the court grants the motion to dismiss or the motion to compel, “the result would be the same -- an end to this lawsuit in its entirety,” it said. The complaint alleges that because of the current power of the internet and social media platforms to publicize a company’s offerings of goods or services, T-Mobile has “a significant incentive to minimize” the negative publicity it receives, including in the form of negative online reviews and comments. While conducting substantial business with California consumers, alleges the complaint, the terms that T-Mobile imposes on its customers “clearly violate” Section 1670.8 of the California Civil Code.