DirecTV is raising red flags about the state of Diamond Sports Group's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. In a statement filed Friday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (docket 23-90116), DirecTV said Diamond since filing for bankruptcy protection in March (see 2303170048) has done "little to provide certainty to the teams, leagues, distributors and customers that depend on [the regional sports network] to provide sports fans across the country access to regional sports content." The direct broadcast satellite operator said while Diamond's reorganization plan depends in large part on it extending and expanding carriage with MVPDs, Diamond has "hardly engaged with DIRECTV in meaningful negotiations regarding an extension of the parties’ distribution agreements (which expire in less than 12 months with no option for a future extension)." DirecTV said while it doesn't object to extending Diamond's exclusive period, the court should "consider these ... concerns in determining whether an extension is warranted." Diamond told the court last month that it needed to extend by 60 days the period within which it has the exclusive rights to file a Chapter 11 reorganization plan because "navigating these choppy waters requires discussions with, and cooperation from, many parties, including multiple creditor groups, sports leagues, teams, and MVPDs." Diamond is seeking an extension of the exclusivity period to Jan. 29.

Philadelphia Flyers owner Comcast Spectacor has until Nov. 6 to file any brief in opposition to defendant Factory Mutual Insurance's Sept. 14 motion to dismiss Spectacor’s complaint for failure to state a claim (see 2309150026), said an order signed Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-02476) by U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Spectacor alleges Factory Mutual refuses to honor the terms of the property insurance policy the Flyers bought to protect against the type of “catastrophic loss” the team incurred when its games were canceled or curtailed at the Wells Fargo Center in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Factory Mutual’s reply brief to Spectator’s opposition to the motion to dismiss is due Nov. 17, said Bartle’s order. Spectacor’s motion to stay the case is otherwise granted until further order of the court, it said. Spectacor sought the stay until the final resolution of two similar sports-insurance cases pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Factory Mutual opposed the stay. The parties “shall promptly notify this court of any relevant developments” in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, said Bartle’s order.

AT&T seeks an order directing green group Below the Blue (BtB) to comply with a document subpoena about the lead content of legacy telecom cables on the floor of Lake Tahoe in California, said AT&T’s reply brief Thursday (docket 2:21-cv-00073) in support of the order. AT&T filed its motion Sept. 26 to compel BtB’s production of the documents, and BtB’s opposition was due Oct. 13, but no opposition was filed, said AT&T. It asked the court to grant the unopposed motion. “A scheduling order is in place and discovery deadlines are fast approaching,” it said. AT&T’s Sept. 26 motion said BtB founder Seth Jones gave the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance all the evidence it needed to file suit against AT&T when he dove to the bottom of Lake Tahoe and retrieved a foot-long sample of cable, finding through later testing that it contained three pounds of lead. Given BtB’s “prominent role in the underlying dispute,” AT&T got the subpoena Aug. 4, asking BtB to produce all documents and communications about the sampling, testing and analysis performed on lead-clad telecom cables at Lake Tahoe and elsewhere. The alliance sued AT&T in January 2021 to enjoin the company from continuing to release lead into the waters of Lake Tahoe (see 2307200027). AT&T said it stands by its assertions that the cables at the bottom of Lake Tahoe pose no hazards to human health or the environment.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shea for Connecticut in New Haven granted Frontier Communications’ renewed request for injunctive relief to block VoIP service provider Mobi Telecom from engaging in unlawful robocalling conduct, said Shea’s signed order Tuesday (docket 3:22-cv-00218). The judge’s permanent injunction prohibits Mobi from routing phone calls to Frontier’s customers made using an automatic telephone dialing system, said the order. Mobi also is barred from using an artificial or prerecorded voice “to deliver a message without the prior express consent of the called party, unless the call is initiated for emergency purposes,” it said. The judge ordered the clerk to close the case.

Plaintiff Debra Brown and defendant T-Mobile agreed to drop T-Mobile as a party to Brown’s lawsuit, said their mutual motion Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-00842) in U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana in South Bend. Brown’s complaint seeks to nullify the wireless communications easement on her residential property in Goshen, Indiana, and to chase multiple telecom and broadband companies from the parcel of real estate that’s “burdened” by the easement (see 2309150006). T-Mobile “disclaims any interest” in the real estate that Brown claims to own, and there appears to be no dispute between Brown and T-Mobile “requiring resolution in this action,” said the mutual motion.

Though Legacy Equity Advisers, a Black-owned private equity firm, was “more qualified” than Blue Link Wireless, a firm owned and operated by former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, AT&T gave its former white CEO “a more favorable deal” to buy its 88 retail stores, alleged Legacy’s first amended racial-animus complaint Friday (docket 3:23-cv-00979) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas. U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater’s Sept. 15 order dismissed most of Legacy’s racial-discrimination claims as time-barred but granted Legacy leave to amend to expand on its allegations that AT&T gave Blue Link preferable treatment because it was white-owned (see 2309180027). CIC Partners and St. Cloud Capital -- Legacy’s investors in the 88 stores -- were “financially stronger” than Stephenson, Blue Link’s principal investor, said the amended complaint. “Long-standing institutions” like CIC Partners and St. Cloud Capital “have stronger access to capital than an individual investor” like Stephenson, it said. Legacy’s management team also “was better suited” than Blue Link’s “to manage and operate the retail stores,” it said. Legacy’s proposed CEO, Kevin Gleason, has more cellular retail experience than his Blue Link counterpart, Saad Nadhir, it said. Gleason had various senior executive roles at Sprint, including as regional president of more than 1,000 stores, and as vice president-national retail, it said. Nadhir’s leadership experience, by contrast, “is more heavily weighted towards restaurant franchises,” it said. Legacy’s proposed chief operating officer, Michael Loney, has more than two decades of experience “leading sales operations teams in the telecommunications industry,” said the amended complaint. During his time at Sprint, Loney was the director-sales operations, company-owned retail, with responsibility for leading more than 1,400 stores, it said. Loney’s Blue Link counterpart, Executive Vice President Glenn Hatcher, previously had "an array of non-retail roles at AT&T, including in sales and distribution, marketing, and corporate events,” it said. Hatcher appears to have secured his position at Blue Link “because he was a friend and former AT&T colleague” of Stephenson, it said.

Counsel for husband-and-wife plaintiffs Feliks Roitman and Yekaterina Shkolnik and for defendant T-Mobile jointly propose a Nov. 10 deadline for service of T-Mobile’s motion to compel the couple’s claims to arbitration and to stay the action in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn pending the outcome of that arbitration, T-Mobile lawyer Rebecca Tingey of Davis Wright wrote U.S. District Judge Eric Vitaliano in a letter Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-06159). According to the jointly proposed briefing schedule, the plaintiffs’ opposition would be due Dec. 21, and T-Mobile’s reply brief in support of the motion would be due Jan. 19, said the letter. T-Mobile customers Roitman and Shkolnik allege the carrier’s “gross negligence in hiring, training, and supervising its employees” enabled a SIM card swap that let criminals steal $130,000 from their savings. They allege an unidentified person unknown to them entered a T-Mobile store in Oakland, California, in November 2021 and initiated a SIM swap on Roitman’s account, while the family was at home in Brooklyn (see 2308170015). The couple “strenuously” objects to T-Mobile’s assertions that their claims belong in arbitration rather than Brooklyn federal court (see 2310030007).

OpenAI “unduly delayed” bringing trademark infringement claims against Open Artificial Intelligence and Guy Ravine and therefore has no legal entitlement to injunctive relief, said defendants’ Wednesday motion to dismiss (docket 4:23-cv-03918) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland. Plaintiff OpenAI alleges the defendants have infringed on its OpenAI trademarks since Ravine filed his trademark application for Open AI in December 2015, “nearly eight years ago,” said the accompanying memorandum of points and authorities. The complaint “provides no excuse for belatedly commencing” the August lawsuit, and moving for injunctive relief Sept. 29, “because there is none,” defendants said. OpenAI “omits from its Complaint” that it received actual notice of defendants’ use of their “Open AI” trademark from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) several times since Jan. 5, 2017, when the PTO first alerted OpenAI to defendants’ “then-pending trademark application for the ‘Open AI’ mark," said the memorandum. After the publication of Ravine’s Open AI mark on Aug. 1, 2017, OpenAI received two additional notices of “Nonfinal Office Action from the PTO refusing to register Plaintiff’s ‘OpenAI’ trademarks because of the likelihood that these marks will be confused with Mr. Ravine’s registered trademark,” the filing said. OpenAI, having had notice of defendants’ trademarks since January 2017, “cannot now claim that there is any purported emergency that justifies the extraordinary award of preliminary injunctive relief in advance of an adjudication or trial on the merits of its claim,” said the memorandum. OpenAI’s request for preliminary injunctive relief can’t survive as a matter of law, so the court should grant defendants’ motion to dismiss and dismiss the request for injunctive relief, said the memorandum.

OpenAI and defendants Open Artificial Intelligence and Guy Ravine, parties in a trademark infringement suit, conferred about a proposed modification to the briefing schedule on OpenAI’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the defendant, said their stipulation and proposed order (docket 4:23-cv-03918) Monday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland. Plaintiff and defendants agree good cause exists to modify the time to oppose and reply to the motion for preliminary injunction; defendants’ counsel needs a “modest” amount of additional time to become familiar with the facts and legal theories relevant to the action and to prepare a response to the motion, the stipulation said. The proposed modification would result in all briefing on the motion, including the opposition and reply, being filed no later than 14 days before the hearing on Nov. 7, it said. The new briefing schedule would have defendants file and serve their opposition to OpenAI’s motion for preliminary injunction by Monday, with OpenAI’s reply brief due Oct. 24, it said. The preliminary injunction would enjoin Open Artificial Intelligence and its officers, employees and agents from “any and all development, production, promotion, sale and distribution of products or services that use the name “‘OpenAI,’ or any confusingly similar variant, including ‘Open AI,’” with a space between "Open" and "AI," said the September motion (see 2310020020).

Defendants Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who face a Jan. 29 damages trial by jury for their roles in the robocall campaign to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the 2020 election, “have asserted their Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination” since the “inception” of the case, their lawyer, David Schwartz, wrote U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for Southern New York in Manhattan in a letter response Friday (docket 1:20-cv-08668). Wohl and Burkman “never stated otherwise and continue to invoke this privilege,” said Schwartz. The plaintiffs in the case, including New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), want Marrero to order Wohl and Burkman to declare by Nov. 4 whether they intend to testify at trial (see 2310050004). They seek the deadline for Wohl and Burkman to either withdraw their Fifth Amendment assertions, or be barred from testifying. If they withdraw their Fifth Amendment assertions, the plaintiffs want the opportunity to redepose them to obtain the discovery to which the plaintiffs otherwise would have been entitled in preparation for trial. If the Wohl and Burkman withdraw their Fifth Amendment claim, the court shouldn’t set a deadline, responded Schwartz. The plaintiffs’ statement that somehow Wohl and Burkman “would be given an unfair advantage if they so choose to withdraw this privilege is completely without merit,” he said.