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.
Plaintiffs Sheila and Dennis Thompson are "precluded" from recovering any damages from Vintage Stock for a willful or knowing Telephone Consumer Protection Act violation, said the home entertainment retailer’s answer Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-00042) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri in St. Louis to the Thompsons’ March 1 first amended complaint. Any such violation, which Vintage Stock denies occurred, wouldn’t have been willful or knowing, “but instead would have been unintentional and resulted from a bona fide error notwithstanding the exercise of reasonable efforts to fully comply with the law,” said its answer. The Thompsons allege Vintage Stock sent them dozens of promotional text messages over several years. They’re currently seeking to remand count II of their first amended complaint to St. Louis County Circuit Court where the complaint originated before Vintage Stock removed it from federal court in January 2023. Their remand motion came days after U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark granted Vintage Stock’s motion to dismiss without prejudice that count of the Thompsons’ complaint (see 2402090027). The judge found that the Thompsons lacked standing to bring the count II allegation that Vintage Stock failed to institute procedures for maintaining a list of persons who request not to be called.
The Media Alliance and Great Public Schools Now seek to intervene in support of the FCC in eight petitions for review of the commission’s Nov. 20 digital discrimination order, now consolidated in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the nonprofits’ unopposed motion Tuesday.
Vaneet Sharma and his company, Astro Vastu Solutions, are trafficking in an “illicit” internet streaming television service called Sharma IPTV using Dish Network and Sling TV channels that are retransmitted without authorization to users that purchase the Sharma service, alleged Dish and Sling in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint Friday (docket 3:24-cv-00961) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. Identifiers that are unique to Dish’s internet transmissions of its channels “were detected when conducting a technical analysis of the corresponding channels” on the Sharma service, said the complaint. The analysis confirmed that channels retransmitted on the service originated from Dish and Sling, it said. Sling’s logo was also "observed on certain channels" retransmitted on the service, “further proof” that the Dish and Sling channels were used to “seed” the service with unauthorized content, it said. Sharma was notified that he must cease providing the service because it infringes Dish’s and Sling’s rights, but he “failed to comply,” said the complaint. Sharma admitted that he won’t stop providing the service because the profits that he receives from the service “are too good to stop,” it said. He told Dish and Sling that if they prosecute a DMCA case against him, he'll simply blame his ex-wife for running the Sharma service under his name, said the complaint.
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.
Sheila and Dennis Thompson seek to remand Count II of their first amended Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint against Vintage Stock to St. Louis County Circuit Court where it originated before the home entertainment retailer removed it in January 2023, said the Thompsons' memorandum Monday (docket 4:23-cv-00042) in support of their remand motion in U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri in St. Louis.
LiveFree Emergency Response, which sells mobile medical alert systems, placed telemarketing calls to Garrett Traylor and his putative class members using a prerecorded voice, despite not having received prior express written consent to place those calls, alleged Traylor’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Friday (docket 1:24-cv-10329) in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston. Traylor listed his landline phone number on the national do not call registry in August 2003, yet he received multiple calls pitching him on LiveFree’s Life Beacon device and $39.99 monthly monitoring services, said his complaint. On all the calls, LiveFree spoofed its phone number to make the incoming call appear as though it originated from the plaintiff’s same 617 area code “so that Traylor would be more likely to answer the phone,” it said. Not only did LiveFree “incessantly place telemarketing calls to Traylor,” it did so after he repeatedly asked the company in writing to stop calling him, it said. The calls that LiveFree placed to the Westwood, Massachusetts, resident and his putative class members were “harassing, irritating, invasive and annoying,” said his complaint. “Where LiveFree is the only party that disclosed its identity” in calls that Traylor answered, he alleges the company is “directly liable” for those unlawful calls, it said. But if discovery reveals that some or all of the calls were made by third parties on LiveFree’s behalf, then it's vicariously liable for those calls, the complaint said. LiveFree isn’t permitted under the law “to outsource and contract its way out of liability by directing and benefitting from its agents’ TCPA violations," it said.
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.
Similar class actions filed Tuesday vs. StubHub and SeatGeek by Levi & Korsinsky allege the online ticket purchase sites violated the New York Arts & Cultural Affairs Law by charging fulfillment and service fees that weren’t disclosed to plaintiffs, all New York residents, at the beginning of the purchase process.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill for the District of Idaho in Coeur d’Alene denied Kochava’s motion to dismiss the FTC’s first amended complaint in a privacy lawsuit over geolocation data, said his signed order Saturday (docket 2:22-cv-00377).