U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert for Northern Illinois in Chicago signed an order Tuesday (docket 1:19-cv-07190) authorizing plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone to contact T-Mobile customers by text on the impact to them of the fake ring tones that T-Mobile is alleged to have inserted instead of connecting calls to rural areas in the U.S. that have expensive routing fees (see 2212230004). The fake ring tones made callers think the recipients didn’t answer, though the calls never were delivered. More than a year after the court set in motion an “action plan" to permit Craigville and Consolidated to contact T-Mobile subscribers by mail who may have experienced the fake ring tones, the plaintiffs have had no meaningful contact with any of those customers due to the inefficiencies of contacting those customers by mail, the plaintiffs told the court in April (see 2304270023). Gilbert’s amended order permits the plaintiffs now to send up to 75 text messages to T-Mobile customers who satisfy the criteria prescribed in the court’s Dec. 19 order for being contacted by mail, including that they needed to have been T-Mobile subscribers between October 2013 and April 2018 when the unlawful conduct allegedly took place. The plaintiffs may send the texts through a peer-to-peer service, but can’t use an automatic telephone dialing system, nor a system with the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to store or produce phone numbers to be called, said the amended order. Those terms appeared designed to bar court-ordered practices that risk violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, though the order didn’t expressly spell that out. The meticulously phrased 165-word text that the plaintiffs were ordered to comply with instructs recipients that they aren’t required to answer the texts or take any action in response, but prompts them to reply YES to consent to a phone call from a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs may contact by phone only those customers who respond YES to the text message, said the order.

Pro se plaintiff James Linlor’s claim under a California statute that McAfee fraudulently transferred the cyberguard.com domain to Musarubra to avoid culpability for his cybersquatting allegations must be dismissed (see 2304260025), McAfee attorney Devanshi Somaya of Jackson Walker told U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen for Northern California in San Jose in a virtual motions hearing Tuesday (docket 5:23-cv-385). Linlor alleges McAfee cybersquatted on the cyberguard.com domain, preventing him from starting a similarly named cybersecurity consultancy. McAfee asserts Linlor is suing the wrong defendant because it transferred the domain to Musarubra in 2021 with the divestiture of its enterprise cybersecurity business. Under the California Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (CUFTA), which is the basis for Linlor’s fraudulent transfer claim, “that statute discusses fraudulent transfer in cases of a creditor and a debtor,” said Somaya. “It’s simply inapplicable here, and that’s why we moved to dismiss that claim,” she said. Van Keulen told Linlor that “I read the statute the same way as McAfee has argued.” The Northern District of California sees the CUFTA often cited in bankruptcy cases involving “the movement of assets, where one party has already been adjudicated as a creditor and another as a debtor,” said the judge. “That’s not the situation here,” she said. “I understand how you’re using fraudulent transfer,” she told Linlor, “but I don’t see it as qualifying under the statutory use of fraudulent transfer.” Linlor finds it suspicious that McAfee transferred the domain to Musarubra Feb. 13, a week after McAfee was properly served with his complaint, he told the judge. “It strains credulity," not just after the filing of complaint, but after proper service, "that the key asset we’re discussing got moved,” he said: “It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

The FAA and SpaceX disagree about the space launch company's intervening on behalf of defendant FAA in a lawsuit challenging the agency's approval of SpaceX commercial launch operations. In reply Friday supporting its motion to intervene (docket 1:23-cv-01204), SpaceX told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia it met the minimal showing needed to demonstrate its interests might not be adequately represented by the existing parties. SpaceX said its interests and those of the FAA overlap in defending the FAA's National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review of SpaceX's Texas launches, but the FAA's obligation is to the American people and not necessarily to SpaceX, and the FAA could take positions during the case that don't align with SpaceX's. In response earlier this month to SpaceX's motion to intervene, the FAA said it didn't have a position on SpaceX being a permissive intervenor in the case but challenged SpaceX's claim it can intervene since the FAA's interests are potentially out of alignment with the company's. It said that concern isn't relevant because the case is narrowly about the adequacy of the FAA's NEPA analysis. Environmental groups and allies are suing the FAA over the agency's approval of SpaceX launches in Texas and their alleged ecological consequences (see 2305010055).

Plaintiff Miranda Bennett voluntarily dismissed with prejudice her Fair Credit Reporting Act claims against Experian, said her notice Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00091) in U.S. District Court for Northern Alabama in Selma. The parties will bear their own fees and costs, it said. Bennett’s claims against the remaining defendants, including Verizon, remain pending, it said. Bennett alleges she was victimized by inaccurate credit reporting when a fraudulent Verizon account was left to fester on her credit profile, and Verizon and the credit agencies did nothing to investigate it or remove it (see 2303160051).

All claims asserted against Verizon by Cellular Solutions, a real estate firm that services rooftop leases with wireless telecommunications carriers (see 2305220046), “are doomed by the same deficiency,” said Verizon’s memorandum Friday (docket 3:23-cv-00659) in U.S. District Court for Connecticut in New Haven in support of its motion to dismiss. The complaint alleges Verizon owes landlord Maxwell Realty more than $64,000 in municipal taxes for the space it’s leasing for wireless telecom equipment on a property in Bridgeport. Cellular Solutions has “full assignment” from Maxwell Realty of all claims arising from the Verizon lease, including its refusal “to pay its tax reimbursement obligations,” it said. But Cellular Solutions fails to allege it ever presented Verizon with notices that were a “condition precedent” to filing suit, said the motion to dismiss. The plaintiff never presented Verizon with copies of tax bills, “as necessary to trigger Verizon’s repayment obligation,” and fails to allege it gave “a proper notice of default,” it said. These notices aren’t “a mere formality” but give Verizon rights under the lease “to either challenge the taxing authority or to cure any alleged default before facing a lawsuit,” it said.

Covington and Burling attorney Phyllis Jones notified the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation Thursday of potential school district tagalong actions in Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (docket No. 3047). Board of Education of Harford County v. Meta Platforms et al. and Board of Education of Howard County v. Meta Platforms et al., both in U.S. District Court for Maryland in Baltimore, share common questions of fact and law with other actions in the MDL, which alleges Facebook, Instagram, Snap, TikTok and YouTube are fueling a mental health crisis among minors in the U.S.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sonja Bivins for Northern Alabama in Selma set a telephone call-in scheduling conference for June 15 at 10 a.m. in plaintiff Miranda Bennett’s Fair Credit Reporting Act complaint against Verizon, said her signed order Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-00091). The conference will aid the court and the parties “in working to secure a just, speedy, and inexpensive resolution of this matter,” said the order. Counsel for the parties should be prepared at the conference “to discuss the specific discovery that will likely be needed, the existence and location of any electronic discovery, and the parties’ efforts to resolve this case,” it said. Bennett’s complaint alleges Verizon violated the FCRA by failing to permanently and lawfully correct its own internal records to prevent the re-reporting of false representations to the consumer credit reporting agencies (see 2303160051).

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation vacated conditional transfer order, CTO-4, in Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, said a Tuesday clerk’s order (docket No. 3047). CTO-4 was filed on March 15, and plaintiffs V. et al, filed a notice of opposition to the proposed transfer order. Plaintiffs, on behalf of minor plaintiff C.O., allege C.O. suffered serious mental and physical harms from ages 10-15 while she was a heavy user of defendants' Instagram and Snapchat platforms. During that time, she was connected to, messaged by and solicited for sexually graphic content and acts on numerous occasions by defendants Reginald Sharp and Eddie Rodriguez, adult users of Instagram and Snapchat, alleges the complaint. Facebook and Instagram parent Meta argued the action should be transferred to the MDL because it involves theories of liability that overlap with the then-170 cases that had already been transferred to and centralized in MDL No. 3047. U.S. District Judge Sarala Nagala for Connecticut in Hartford granted plaintiffs’ motion to remand a social media lawsuit to Connecticut Superior Court in Fairfield last month after May 17 oral argument (see 2305250014). Based on the allegations of the complaint, the district court lacks jurisdiction over the action due to a lack of complete diversity, Nagala ruled. Though the plaintiffs are diverse from the corporate defendants, both plaintiffs and the individual defendants are citizens of Connecticut, she said. Removal was “procedurally improper” under the forum defendant rule because the individual defendants are citizens of Connecticut, the forum state, she said.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty granted defendants’ motion to stay (docket 3:23-cv-00381) the deadline until Friday to respond to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. et al.’s largely identical complaint against President Joe Biden and nearly 70 federal defendants pending resolution of the motion for preliminary injunction in Missouri v. Biden (docket 3:22-cv-01213). The Monday filing in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Monroe also ordered the parties to file a joint status report in response to the complaint within 14 days of the court’s resolution of the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction in that First Amendment case brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general. Doughty’s April 21 order gave defendants until June 20 to respond to the preliminary injunction motion filed by plaintiffs, the order said. Kennedy and the Children’s Health Defense's (CHD) moved to consolidate their March 24 class action against Biden et al. with Missouri v. Biden, saying the defendants and facts are “substantially identical” (see 2304050007). Kennedy called the case a “First Amendment challenge to the massive, systematic efforts by the federal government to induce social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.” The “only difference” between the two cases, said CHD, is that the Kennedy case seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, not damages, said its March memorandum in support of consolidation. Doughty deferred a ruling on the motion to consolidate until a resolution is rendered on the pending motion for preliminary injunction in Missouri v. Biden.

Charter Communications failed to maintain its communications wires around a public alleyway in Medford, Oregon, causing damage to a vehicle driving through the alley, alleged a complaint (docket 23-cv-22065) in Oregon Circuit Court in Jackson County Thursday. State Farm and its customer Ryan Younkin, sued Charter for negligence, in which the insurer paid Younkin $3,883 for damage to his 2018 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Cargo. Because Charter didn’t keep its wires at a "lawful, standard height," Younkin’s vehicle was damaged when the low-hanging wires hooked around the ladder, damaging the vehicle, the complaint said.