Communications Litigation Today is tracking the below lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions. Cases marked with an * were terminated since the last update. Cases in bold are new since the last update.
The class-action allegations of 38 AirTag user plaintiffs are “a misplaced effort to hold Apple legally responsible for third parties’ intentional misuse of its AirTag product” to track the plaintiffs or their family members without their consent, said Apple’s memorandum of points and authorities Friday (docket 3:22-cv-07668) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco in support of its motion to dismiss the Oct. 6 first amended complaint.
The U.S. Supreme Court “admonished” in its 1979 decision in Califano v. Yamasaki that "injunctive relief should be no more burdensome to the defendant than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs,” said the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) in an amicus brief Friday (docket 23-344) in support of Apple’s Sept. 28 cert petition against Epic Games (see 2310030002). The nationwide injunction issued against Apple in the case, which applies to millions of nonparty app developers, can’t be “reconciled with that principle,” said ICLE, a research and policy nonprofit.
LG Electronics USA and its Mobilecomm subsidiary owe marketing services company GS Line (GSL) “several million dollars” for unpaid or underpaid invoices spanning several years, alleged a fraud lawsuit (docket 2:23-cv-21528) Thursday in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark.
Though the respondent plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court review of the social media injunction against the White House and four federal agencies “primarily assert their claims as censored speakers,” the plaintiffs in Kennedy v. Biden “assert the First Amendment claims of social media viewers and listeners all over the country,” said their motion to intervene Thursday (docket 23-411) in that SCOTUS review on behalf of the respondents (see 2310260070). The Kennedy plaintiffs also seek leave to file a brief in opposition to the government’s arguments to defeat the injunction.
Food 4 Less, part of the Ralphs and Kroger supermarket chains, unlawfully collects, uses and retains personal biometric identifiers of employees in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), alleged a complaint (docket 1:23-cv-15345) Thursday in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.
Software development kits (SDKs) in NBC apps allow app and website developers to “surreptitiously collect and transmit data to third parties,” said a privacy class action (docket 1:23-cv-09433) Thursday in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mustafa Kasubhai for Oregon in Eugene denied plaintiff AT&T’s motion for summary judgment against Lane County, Oregon, but granted the county’s motion for summary judgment against AT&T, said the judge’s signed opinion and order Wednesday (docket 6:22-cv-01635). In dismissing AT&T’s case, the judge held that the carrier failed to exhaust its remedies under Oregon’s administrative land use process.
Washington state’s argument for taxing federal Lifeline support depends on the Washington Supreme Court agreeing that the Universal Service Administrative Co. is not the U.S. government’s instrumentality, agreed Deputy Solicitor General Cynthia Alexander, representing the state revenue department, at oral argument Thursday. State justices zeroed in on this question -- and practical impacts -- as they weighed whether federal Lifeline funds subsidizing low-income consumers’ phone lines are subject to the state’s retail sales tax.
If Iqvia’s purchase of Propel Media (PMI) goes through, the acquisition would “eliminate intense head-to-head competition” between Iqvia’s Lasso division and PMI’s DeepIntent healthcare professional (HCP) programmatic advertising platform, said the FTC’s redacted memorandum of law Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-06188) in support of its motion for a preliminary injunction to block the acquisition on antitrust grounds.