A 4th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court panel improperly vacated a jury’s damages award despite defendant Cox Communications’ uncontested waiver of its challenge to that award, and without explaining why it was excusing that waiver, said more than four dozen record labels and music publishers in a petition Tuesday (docket 21-1168) for rehearing or rehearing en banc.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The U.S. Supreme Court should reject Ambassador Animal Hospital's Nov. 20 cert petition to reverse the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision affirming the district court’s dismissal of Ambassador’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint, said respondent Elanco’s brief Friday (docket 23-552) in opposition to the petition.

The New York Times Co.'s copyright infringement challenge to Microsoft’s large language models (LLMs) for AI (see 2312270044) harkens back to the entertainment industry’s alarmist reaction to the VCR, said Microsoft’s memorandum of law Monday (docket 1:23-cv-11195) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of its motion to dismiss three claims of the Times’ complaint.

After buying Twitter, now called X, Elon Musk falsely asserted that certain company executives were being terminated “for cause,” but it was a “sham” designed to deprive them of their severance benefits, alleged a fraud complaint Monday (docket 4:24-cv-01304) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.

The Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, plus five individual social media users, are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to “rewrite” the constitutional boundary between the public and private sectors by affirming the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court’s “sweeping and unprecedented” social media injunction against Biden administration officials (see 2309110001), said DOJ’s reply brief Monday in Murthy v. Missouri (docket 23-411). Oral argument is March 18.

The district court erred in concluding that TikTok and its individual users were likely to prevail on the merits of their First Amendment, supremacy clause and commerce clause challenges to SB-419, Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, said Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s (R) opening brief Friday (docket 24-34) at the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court. He's seeking to reverse the injunction that blocks him from enforcing the ban (see 2312010003).

Statements in Fertility Center of Las Vegas’ (FCLV) privacy policy that it doesn’t share patients’ private information with third parties are "false,” alleged a class action Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00411) in U.S. District Court for Nevada in Las Vegas.

The U.S. government will seek dismissal of Vermont National Telephone (VTEL) litigation against Dish Network designated entities (DE) Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless over allegations of fraud in the 2015 AWS-3 auction. The U.S. is the relator in the VTEL litigation. DOJ filed a notice of intent to intervene and dismiss Friday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (docket 1:15-cv-00728). It hasn't said in court filings the reasoning behind its move to get the case dismissed, and didn't comment Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2022 reversed the lower court's dismissal of VTEL's False Claims Act suit against the Dish DEs and remanded it to the D.C. District Court (see 2205170026).

Some 21% of data breach victims don’t realize their identity has been compromised until more than two years after it has happened, said a class action (docket 8:24-cv-00433) brought by three plaintiffs vs. loanDepot Friday in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana.