That Intelsat concedes its C-Band Alliance (CBA) agreement with SES continued to apply after a November 2019 public-auction announcement confirms the agreement wasn’t limited to a “market-based approach,” asserted appellant SES Tuesday in a supplemental reply brief (docket 3:22-cv-00668) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia. The case is on appeal from U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Virginia in Richmond where Judge Keith Phillips ruled in October that SES failed to establish Intelsat is liable to SES “under any theory of recovery set forth by SES” in a $1.8 billion breach of contract lawsuit claiming Intelsat breached the CBA agreement before it was terminated (see 2210030050). Phillips said SES' argument it and Intelsat intended for revenue from a spectrum clearing to be shared regardless of whatever approach the FCC took "is found nowhere in the Agreement." SES argued the CBA agreement language was ambiguous, but New York state law, which governs the agreement, "appl[ies] a high bar respecting ambiguity," Phillips ruled, saying the agreement made it clear such issues as "project gross proceeds" apply only in the case of a private, market-based approach. Intelsat’s contention that SES’ contributions “ultimately produced no value ‘is absurd, even insulting,’” SES said, citing $9.7 billion the parties secured together. The FCC’s final order didn’t accept all CBA proposals, but “that does not negate the parties’ joint work or its value,” SES said. The court should reverse the judgment of the bankruptcy court disallowing SES’ claims against Intelsat and remand for calculation of damages, it said.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam for Northern California in Oakland ordered defendant Voyager Labs to show cause by May 15 why its April 13 motion to dismiss Meta’s complaint shouldn’t be terminated as moot in light of Meta’s filing of its first amended complaint Friday, said the judge’s text-only order Monday (docket 4:23-cv-154). Meta’s amended complaint alleges Voyager’s unlawful data-scraping conduct involving the accounts of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users persisted after Meta sued the surveillance software company Jan. 12 (see 2305080044).

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon for Southern New York in Manhattan granted the request of Amazon and its third-party seller Shenzhen Zongheng Domain Network that Shenzhen’s motion to vacate an arbitration award and Amazon’s motion to confirm that award be held in abeyance until Shenzhen’s anticipated motion to remand the case to New York Supreme Court is fully briefed (see 2305080023). The court won’t set a briefing schedule for the motion to vacate an arbitration award, and any Shenzhen motion to remand shall be filed by Friday, said Rochon’s signed order Monday (docket 1:23-cv-03334). Shenzhen is seeking to vacate a $507,619 arbitration award in Amazon’s favor after Amazon shut down the third-party seller site for manipulating fake product reviews.

AT&T wants the court to stay discovery and all discovery-related deadlines, pending the resolution of AT&T’s motion to compel plaintiff Robert Graham’s claims to arbitration, said AT&T’s motion Monday (docket 1:22-cv-05155) in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta. AT&T says Graham agreed to a “broad arbitration provision” when he renewed his contract with AT&T in October 2018 to upgrade his phone (see 2303130002). Graham alleges AT&T’s handset upgrade exchange program was a “bait-and-switch scheme.” Graham refused AT&T requests to stay discovery, said AT&T’s Monday motion. AT&T “risks waiving its right to seek arbitration if it meaningfully participates in discovery,” it said. AT&T asked the court to grant its motion to stay discovery “not only to promote judicial economy,” but also to avoid “jeopardizing AT&T’s ability” to seek arbitration of Graham’s claims, it said. AT&T shouldn’t be required “to incur the expense of participating in judicial discovery” unless the court denies its pending arbitration motion, it said.

Dish Network has largely completed the investigation of a data breach that’s the subject of a lawsuit (docket 1:23-cv-00734) in the U.S. District Court for Colorado in Denver (see 2303240002), CEO Erik Carlson said on a Dish earnings call Monday. Customer databases weren’t accessed in the incident, though employee information was, Carlson said. “We’ve taken steps to protect the affected records and personal information,” he said. The extracted data was deleted, he said, noting Dish has no indication the data was misused. “Data security is extremely important to us,” he said. The company incurred about $30 million in costs, he said.

Third-party Amazon seller Shenzhen Zongheng Domain Network plans to file a motion by May 12 to remand to New York state court its petition to vacate a $507,619 arbitration award in Amazon’s favor (see 2304210001), Davis Wright, counsel for Amazon, wrote U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon for Southern New York in Manhattan in a letter Friday (docket 1:23-cv-03334). Amazon declines to disburse the $507,619 in sales proceeds to Shenzhen Zongheng after “uncovering” that the seller was “manipulating customer product reviews to artificially and deceptively inflate the perceived value of the goods it was selling in the Amazon store.” The parties ask that the motion to vacate the arbitration award, and Amazon’s anticipated cross-motion to confirm the award, be held in abeyance while the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York is briefed, said the letter. If the court denies the motion to remand and the proceedings remain under Rochon, the parties then will propose a briefing schedule for that motion and the anticipated cross-motion, it said. If the court alternatively prefers for the underlying application to vacate the arbitration award to proceed, the parties ask the court to set a date for Amazon to file its opposition and anticipated cross-motion to confirm, it said.

Two divisions of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group are suing McDonald’s over the restaurant chain’s alleged failure to live up to a 2021 commitment to spend 2% of its billion-dollar ad budget that year with black-owned media companies, increasing to 5% by 2024, said a complaint Thursday (docket 23STCV10045) in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County. “The greatest trade deficit in America is the trade deficit between White corporate America and Black America, and we must close this trade deficit immediately," said Allen in a news release Monday. McDonald’s didn’t comment. Under a four-year plan released by McDonald’s, the company should now be spending 4% of its national advertising budget on black-owned media, but McDonald’s “is not coming anywhere close to meeting that commitment,” said the complaint. McDonald’s released the plan in response to allegations from Allen about its ad spending, and Allen’s companies were poised to benefit from the increased spending, the complaint said. “AMG is by far the largest African American-owned media company in the country," and the plaintiffs represent "over 90% of that category," said the filing. "As such, to fulfill its commitment, any allocation would require McDonald’s to spend in excess of $50 million annually to advertise on Plaintiffs’ properties,” the filing said. “McDonald’s rushed out its ‘four-year plan’ in a self-serving ploy to cast itself as racially sensitive and sympathetic.” The lawsuit calls for an injunction against McDonald’s requiring it to spend at least 5% of its ad budget on black-owned media annually, and pay damages in “excess of $100 million.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson for Northern California in Oakland, in a text-only order, scheduled a virtual discovery hearing for Tuesday at noon at the parties’ request to resolve three discovery disputes about the use and disposition of a proposed plaintiff preservation information form in the multidistrict litigation against the major social media platforms. The defendant social media companies track, collect and use a substantial amount of data on each of their users, “some of which is currently subject to short retention periods,” said a joint statement filed May 3 by the parties. The form includes all necessary information to enable the defendants to identify and preserve relevant user information.

Meta offers “little support" for its argument that a pending remand motion for a social media public nuisance lawsuit should be adjudicated in multidistrict litigation rather than in Connecticut, said plaintiffs V.V. and E.Q. in a Thursday reply in support of a motion to vacate (docket 3:23-cv-00284) a conditional transfer order (CTO-4) to Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 3047) under Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland. Facebook and Instagram parent Meta cited “common questions of fact” in an April opposition to plaintiffs’ V.V. and E.Q.’s April 6 memorandum in support of their motion to vacate CTO-4 (see 2304280037). The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation “explicitly encouraged transferor courts, not the transferee,” to rule on pending remand motions where possible, “particularly a motion to remand to state court,” said the reply. Meta doesn’t explain in its opposition why Northern California federal court “is in the best position to decide the issues of Second Circuit and Connecticut law controlling remand,” said the reply, saying joinder issues concerning Connecticut law “are unique to this case.” Plaintiffs don’t ask the Panel to make a decision on the merits of the underlying case, but the already-briefed motion to remand should “be allowed adequate time to be ruled upon in the district court.” There’s “no judicial economy" to having the MDL await review of a threshold jurisdictional question that's scheduled to be decided within weeks of the filing of the reply, plaintiffs said. As an alternative to vacating CTO-4, plaintiffs requested a 30-day stay to give the District of Connecticut adequate time to respond, said the reply.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering scheduling oral argument for sometime in August in San Francisco in former President Donald Trump’s appeal of a lower court’s dismissal of his First Amendment complaint against Twitter and its former CEO Jack Dorsey, said a text-only docket entry Thursday (docket 22-15961). Trump alleges his rights were violated when Twitter permanently banned him for engaging in constitutionally protected speech. Trump’s six co-plaintiffs allege Twitter also censored and banned them “for their expression of views contrary to the government’s preferred positions.”