The AFL-CIO supports the government’s calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to preserve Chevron, rather than overturn it, said the union’s amicus brief Friday (docket 22-451) in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The AFL-CIO believes the doctrine “is both a constitutionally permissible and practically necessary part of a functional system of government,” it said.
Pennsylvania personal injury attorney Saul Lassoff filed a fraud complaint Monday (docket 1:23-cv-20419) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Camden on behalf of himself, his wife Shirley and a proposed class of MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment customers whose personal data was “negligently mishandled” since March 1. Lassoff investigated news articles, public filings, press releases and "other matters of public record” in preparation for his class action, it said. The Lassoffs, Pennsylvania residents, were MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment loyalty customers during the class period when their names, address, Social Security and driver’s license numbers, bank account and credit card information were mishandled, said the complaint. Defendants notified plaintiffs Sept. 7 that their personal information had been compromised, and instructed them to file fraud alerts with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Motor Vehicles, their credit card company and national credit bureaus; order a credit report; register for credit monitoring; contact the FTC; file a local police report; and close affected bank accounts, the complaint said. The required tasks were “extremely burdensome and time consuming for Plaintiffs to complete" and required over six hours over several days, it said. Plaintiffs didn’t specify the nature of the breach, but a Sept. 7 Caesars Entertainment SEC filing referenced “recently identified suspicious activity in its information technology network resulting from a social engineering attack on an outsourced IT support vendor.” Reuters reported Thursday that the Scattered Spider hacking group claimed responsibility, saying it stole 6 terabytes of data from the defendants. The company’s “customer-facing operations, including our physical properties and our online and mobile gaming applications, have not been impacted by this incident and continue without disruption,” said Caesars' filing. But news reports showed frozen slot machines at the MGM casino in Las Vegas over the weekend and reports circulated about malfunctioning electronic key cards. The New York Post reported Monday that MGM had entered its eighth day of “cybersecurity issues” that “silenced slot machines and shut down internal computer systems,” costing the company up to $8.4 million per day in revenue. A Sept. 12 MGM Resorts news release said the company "recently identified a cybersecurity issue” affecting certain company systems. “Promptly after detecting the issue, we began an investigation with assistance from leading external cybersecurity experts,” said the company, which notified law enforcement and is “taking steps to protect our systems and data, including shutting down certain systems.” The company's investigation is “ongoing,” it's working “diligently to resolve the matter” and it will continue to implement measures to secure its business operations “and take additional steps as appropriate." The Lassoffs assert claims of breach of fiduciary duty and negligence. They seek an award for themselves and the class of compensatory damages for all damages sustained as a result of defendants’ wrongdoing, pre- and post-judgment interest “from the date of entry until the date of satisfaction,” plus legal fees and costs.
Eight former FTC and DOJ antitrust enforcers from Democratic and Republican administrations asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm the district court's denial of the FTC's motion for a preliminary injunction on Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy (see 2307110031). Their brief was one of seven amici briefs filed Wednesday (docket 23-15992), all in opposition to the FTC's merger challenge on appeal.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, D-N.Y., deprived political rival Gregg Marcel Dixon of his First Amendment rights by blocking and muting him from his social media accounts on Twitter, said Dixon’s complaint (docket 9:23-cv-04500) filed pro se Thursday in U.S. District Court for South Carolina in Beaufort. Dixon's website refers to him as a candidate for the 6th Congressional District of South Carolina, a post Clyburn has held since 1993.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick for Northern California in San Francisco denied Meta’s motion to dismiss claims it violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and of breach of contract and unjust enrichment, and he granted the motion with leave to amend other claims in the John Doe v. Meta privacy class action, said his Thursday order (docket 3:22-cv-03580).
Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard buy involves a “vertical merger” of the sort that the U.S. antitrust agencies “have rarely sought to enjoin” and have lost “every recent case in which they tried.” So said the Microsoft-Activision 9th Circuit answering brief Wednesday (docket 23-15992) in the FTC’s appeal of U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s denial of its preliminary injunction to block the transaction from going through (see 2307110061).
A flurry of notices -- for oral argument, related cases and opposition responses -- were filed last week and Monday before the U.S. Panel on Multidistrict Litigation involving the May MOVEit data breach. Cases stem from a May data breach at Progress Software Corp. (PSC) whose MOVEit file transfer software contained a vulnerability that was exploited by Russian ransomware group Clop.
OpenAI will move to dismiss counts II-VI of a copyright infringement complaint, at a hearing Dec. 7 or soon thereafter, said a Monday notice (docket 4:23-cv-03223) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. The notice and memorandum of points and authorities in support of the motion to dismiss address claims brought by authors Paul Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey.
Progress Software (PSC) and Pension Benefits Information (PBI) failed to properly secure and safeguard plaintiff Dana LoGiudici’s personally identifiable information (PII), said a Tuesday class action (docket 1:23-cv-11916) in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston. Defendants violated Section 5 of the FTC Act by failing to protect plaintiffs’ PII in a data breach, it said.
The Aug. 7 opposition of Legacy Equity Advisors to AT&T’s July 17 motion to dismiss (see 2308080037) can’t save its complaint from dismissal, said AT&T’s reply Monday (docket 3:23-cv-00979) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas. The private equity firm alleges AT&T violated Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act when it blocked the firm from bidding on assets AT&T was divesting, including DirecTV, Cricket Wireless, AT&T’s Puerto Rican wireless operations and a tranche of 88 retail stores, due to the firm’s African American ownership and management.