Defendant Vintage Stock doesn’t deny any of the allegations of plaintiffs Sheila and Dennis Thompson that the home entertainment retailer sent them dozens of text message solicitations to numbers listed on the national and Missouri do not call registries, said the Thompsons’ memorandum Wednesday (docket 4:23-cv-00042) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri in St. Louis in opposition to Vintage Stock’s Feb. 8 motion to dismiss their Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims for lack of standing (see 2302090045).
A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit unanimously rejected Schwab Multimedia’s appeal of FCC decisions that led to the broadcaster losing its permit to build an AM station in Culver City, California, said an opinion Friday from Judge Justin Walker. “You can’t build a radio station without a place to put it,” wrote Walker. Schwab had appealed the agency’s denial of its fourth tolling request to extend construction deadlines for the unbuilt KWIF(AM) Culver City. After losing its original construction site Schwab had argued that its failure to construct had been caused by industry delays from the COVID-19 pandemic and California wildfires, and that it had secured a new site, though that site hadn’t yet been approved by the FCC. The agency said that site loss was the actual reason for the delays, and that site loss is not a valid reason for extending construction deadlines under FCC rules. “Because the agency’s decision was reasonable and reasonably explained, we affirm,” the opinion said.
The originally unpublished Feb. 1 opinion in Securus v. California Public Utilities Commission will be published, the 2nd District California Court of Appeals ordered Monday in case B320207. The CPUC on Feb. 16 requested publishing it. The court said there's no change to its judgment affirming the commission’s 2021 decision to provide interim relief by capping intrastate calling rates for incarcerated people at 7 cents per minute and banning ancillary fees (see 2302020036).
A landowner who installed a padlock at the entrance of a cell tower site in Franklin County, Ohio, is in breach of a lease to STC Two, alleged a Friday complaint (docket (2:23-cv-00764) filed by STC Two and Global Signal in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus.
Defendant American Tower International “clearly and unequivocally relinquished any entitlement” to remove the complaint of Terra Towers, TBS Management and DT Holdings to U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami, said the plaintiffs' reply Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-20009) to ATI’s opposition to remand (see 2302170012). The plaintiffs allege ATI improperly withdrew from an $800 million Latin American telecom tower project contract called Project Codu. They want the case remanded to the 11th Judicial Circuit Court in Miami-Dade County where it originated because the parties stipulated to facts during their underlying arbitration proceedings that negate “the existence of subject matter jurisdiction in this cause.” ATI contends in a “poorly conceived argument” that the parties didn’t stipulate to any facts that waive ATI’s right to removal or that negate the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction under the New York Convention, said the plaintiffs’ reply. To properly remove the action to federal court in Miami, ATI needed to demonstrate “the subject matter of the state court complaint relates to the arbitration provisions” found within the site development agreement (SDA) among the parties’ Peruvian subsidiaries, they said. But ATI adopted “precisely the opposite legal position” during the underlying arbitration when it asserted in its February 2022 responsive pleading that Project Codu didn’t arise out of or relate to the SDA, they said. Having asserted that contention in the underlying arbitration, ATI clearly and unequivocally disclaimed its removal rights under the New York Convention, they said. ATI would have the court “subscribe to the tenuous proposition that no waiver occurred because it did not utter” the precise words of a waiver, they said. For “obvious reasons,” the court “should reject this specious contention,” they said.
Defendant T-Mobile moved for judgment on the pleadings in Craigsville Telephone’s and Consolidated Telephone’s conspiracy suit, which claims T-Mobile inserted fake local ring back tones (LRBT) instead of connecting calls to rural areas with expensive routing fees. In a Friday motion (docket 1:19-cv-7190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago, T-Mobile asserted the plaintiffs failed to state a cognizable civil conspiracy claim under state law and that claims for damages should be dismissed. Three of the remaining claims in the case against T-Mobile allege it violated the Communications Act and the fourth – a civil conspiracy claim against T-Mobile and Inteliquent -- alleges the companies “engaged in a scheme to perpetrate call connection issues” for calls originating from cell phones and terminating at landline phones in certain rural locations. The court determined that under Minnesota or Indiana state law, the alleged Communications Act violations don't provide the predicate tort or criminal acts required to state a conspiracy claim, absolving Inteliquent of the civil conspiracy count against it (see 2302100007). The court’s reasoning should be applied to the claim against T-Mobile as well, said T-Mobile’s Friday memorandum of law in support of its motion to dismiss. Without a “cognizable conspiracy claim,” plaintiffs have no claim for which punitive damages may be awarded, and those claims should be dismissed, too, it said. Courts that considered similar claims “have concluded that punitive damages are not available for a Communications Act violation,” said the memo.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s (R) response to Smartbiz Telecom’s motion to dismiss the state’s robocall lawsuit against it has new unpled allegations and theories of liability and shouldn't be considered in determining the allegations at issue, said the defendant’s Friday response (docket 1:22-cv-23945) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami. The plaintiff asked that its motions to dismiss and to join required parties be granted.
Defendant American Tower International’s removal of a state court breach of contract complaint to U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami based on the New York Convention “should be sustained,” said ATI’s opposition Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-20009) to the plaintiffs’ motion to remand (see 2302030003).
The U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania “has supplemental jurisdiction of the common law claims” of plaintiff Mark Fidanza and his proposed putative class, said his first amended Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint Tuesday (docket 2:22-cv-05185). His claims “are so related to federal claims in the action that they form part of the same case or controversy under Article III” of the Constitution, it said. Fidanza alleges the Republican Committee of Chester County, Pennsylvania, bombarded him with dozens of unsolicited text messages in the run-up to the Nov. 8 election even though he’s registered to vote in the state's Montgomery County and never voted in Chester County. His original Dec. 28 complaint (see 2212280028) didn’t contain the language on supplemental jurisdiction. The GOP committee hasn't answered Fidanza's original complaint.
Decisions in the two interlinked cases involving the Communications Decency Act's Section 230 being argued before the Supreme Court next week could lead to many conflicts with state and international laws, force Congress to act, spawn waves of litigation or cause the cases to “dissolve like alka seltzer,” said legal and tech experts on a Brookings Institute virtual panel Tuesday on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh. “I think it is correct this will be the most important Supreme Court decision about the Internet possibly ever,” said Alan Rozenshtein, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School.