Walmart “sympathizes” with Risa Potters and other fraud victims, but her claims that the retailer should have done more to protect her from a third-party fraudster “are meritless and should be dismissed,” said its memorandum of points and authorities Friday (docket 1:22-cv-0337) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles in support of its motion to dismiss Potters' December fraud class action (see 2312110039).

Expect a U.S. Supreme Court majority to side with the tech industry in its content moderation fight against social media laws in Florida and Texas, experts told us in interviews last week.

The Texas Association of Business (TAB) petitioned the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court for review of the FCC’s updated data breach notification rules. The rules were adopted Dec. 13, released Dec. 21 and published in the Federal Register Feb. 12, said TAB's Thursday filing (docket 24-60085). They are effective March 13 (see 2402090035).

An Ohio court can and should call Google Search a common carrier, the state argued Friday. In a separate opposition brief, Google protested that it’s nothing like a common carrier: "Google is not a 'dumb pipe' or 'mere conduit.' The Ohio Chamber of Commerce supported the company, arguing in a Thursday amicus brief that Ohio’s attempt to regulate the search company would be “anti-business.”

A Feb. 16 motion for injunction by the plaintiffs in three nearly identical copyright class actions that were consolidated Nov. 9 in In Re: OpenAI ChatGPT Litigation requests “extraordinary and drastic relief,” said defendant OpenAI in its opposition to the motion Thursday (docket 3:23-cv-03223) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

Comcast used “deficient data security practices” by relying on Citrix’s “flawed software applications” that resulted in a “massive and preventable” October data breach, alleged a fraud class action Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00793) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Since an April data breach at Emmanuel College in Boston, Sopiya Shrestha has experienced an uptick in spam calls concerning fraudulent communications, said her negligence class action Thursday (docket 1:24-cv-10434) against the school's trustees in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) is resisting calls by five individual TikTok users and TikTok itself to personally depose him during the discovery phase of the two consolidated cases that challenge the constitutionality of the state's TikTok ban, said Knudsen’s response Thursday (docket 9:23-cv-00061) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula.

A Verizon employee gained unauthorized access to a file containing personally identifiable information (PII) of 63,206 company staffers on Sept. 21, though Verizon didn’t discover the breach until Dec. 21, alleged a fraud class action Wednesday (docket 2:24-cv-01431) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. Moreover, Verizon notified the Maine attorney general and data breach victims weeks later, on Feb. 7, it said.

California’s social media transparency law, AB-587, “reflects a growing trend of government interference in the private editorial judgments” of businesses that operate on the internet, said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an amicus brief Wednesday (docket 24-271) at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of X’s appeal to block California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) from enforcing it (see 2401160031).