Malicious actors accessed personal records of 3.9 million current and former Northwell Health patients between March 27 and May 2, but Northwell and its record-keeping vendor, Perry Johnson & Associates, kept the data breach hidden from the public until Nov. 3, alleged plaintiff Crystal Brewster’s class action Monday (docket 1:23-cv-08627) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. Northwell runs 20 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient facilities in the New York area.

Claims of manipulation, misrepresentation and intentional deception permeated X Corp.’s well-publicized Nov. 20 complaint (docket 4:23-cv-01175) against media watchdog Media Matters in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Fort Worth. Media Matters’ “blatant smear campaign” is part of a plan to “drive advertisers from X,” said the former Twitter's complaint against the watchdog group and its senior investigative reporter Eric Hananoki.

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.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) refuses to provide direct internet connections via “peering,” linking its network to network optimization service provider Subspace and similar competitors, said an antitrust complaint (docket 2:23-cv-01772) filed Saturday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle.

Timothy Aguilar’s Oct. 13 complaint alleging that Network Insurance Senior Health Division (NISHD) hounded him with Medicare robocalls when he wasn’t even close to applying for benefits (see 2310200031) “fails to allege facts sufficient to state a cause of action,” said NISHD’s answer Monday (docket 4:23-cv-03988) in U.S. District Court for Southern Texas in Houston.

A California state appeals court ruling in Liapes v. Facebook (docket A164880) would make it unlawful to direct online information and advertisements to the people most likely to be interested in them, said NetChoice in an amicus letter Monday to the California Supreme Court, urging it to review the case.

The Constitution vests all judicial power in the Article III courts, yet the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1984 Chevron decision holds that courts “must abdicate their independent judgment” and defer to federal agencies’ “interpretation of ambiguous statutes.” So said Relentless, Huntress and Seafreeze Fleet, the second set of petitioners urging SCOTUS to undo Chevron, in their opening brief Monday (docket 22-1219).

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.

Google, like almost every email service provider, “uses sophisticated filtering technology to protect users of its free Gmail service from unwanted and dangerous spam emails,” said Google’s memorandum of points and authorities Thursday (docket 2:22-cv-01904) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento in support of its motion to dismiss the Republican National Committee’s Oct. 10 first amended complaint (see 2310120002).

For years, 2K Games has refused to refund gamers, including children, for their unused in-game currency, alleges a fraud class action Friday (docket 3:23-cv-05961 ) vs. 2K and Take-Two Interactive Software in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.