The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the petition for writ of mandamus from Standard General, Cox Media Group and Tegna in an unpublished order Friday morning in docket 23-1084. The ruling by Judges Cornelia Pillard, Michelle Childs and Florence Pan contains few details. "Petitioners have not demonstrated that respondent has unreasonably delayed in acting on their applications," said the ruling. "Nor have they shown that respondent has a 'crystal clear' duty to rule on their applications without resort to a hearing." The ruling means the FCC’s proceeding will continue and will almost certainly extend beyond the May 22 deadline at which the deal’s financing expires, potentially ending the Standard/Tegna transaction. Standard has called for the FCC’s commissioners to force a vote on the transaction, but that is widely seen as unlikely to happen. Standard General and the FCC didn’t immediately comment.
NCB Management Services, which buys credit-card debt from Bank of America and other financial institutions, sent notices to nearly 500,000 individuals March 24, informing them that their personally identifiable information (PII) was exposed to bad actors in a data breach it said it first learned about Feb. 1, alleged plaintiff Kylie Meyer’s class action Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-01340) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The court should grant defendant AT&T’s unopposed motion to stay discovery and the joint proposal deadline pending its motion to dismiss EDN Global’s fraud claim against it, said the carrier’s Friday motion (docket 3:23-cv-00355) in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta. EDN sued AT&T in July in Superior Court of Fulton County in Georgia, with allegations including tortious interference with contract and business relations, fraud, trade secrets theft, theft by deception and taking, conversion, Georgia racketeering, and breach of fiduciary duty and confidential relationship, said the complaint. AT&T moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim and to transfer the venue, which plaintiffs opposed. On Feb. 14, U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Boulee of Northern Georgia granted AT&T a motion to transfer. Boulee didn’t rule on AT&T’s motion to dismiss; the motion remains pending. Counsel for plaintiffs and defendants met March 24 to discuss whether the case could be settled, said the motion, saying the parties agreed to stay discovery and a joint proposal deadline until resolution of the motion to dismiss.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico for Colorado in Denver signed an order Friday (docket 1:21-cv-03004) referring three technical issues to the FCC under the doctrine of primary jurisdiction for resolution in the case brought by plaintiffs Qwest, Level 3 and Global Crossing against eight defendant Peerless Network state affiliates (see 2302100059). Domenico granted the referral “since adjudication of these issues implicates technical questions whose resolution Congress has entrusted to the FCC,” said his order. The underlying case is stayed, pending the outcome of the referral, which followed an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the dispute through mediation. The case involves negotiated interconnect agreements and the access tariffs associated with them. Qwest, Level 3 and Global Crossing sued the Peerless affiliates in November 2021, alleging they engaged in a scheme of avoiding mandatory switched access charges, thereby giving them an unfair competitive advantage in the toll-free marketplace. The defendants countersued in March 2022, alleging the telecom companies used unfair and unsupported billing methods, to the detriment of the Peerless affiliates. The issues for FCC referral: (1) Are toll-free calls always interexchange calls subject to tariffed switched access charges?; (2) Are “responsible organizations” (Resp Orgs) required to populate the SMS/800 database with their own carrier identification code, or the CIC of a carrier they have specifically engaged, or can a Resp Org populate the database with CIC 0110 and route toll-free calls to a regional bell operating company like Qwest for completion over local interconnection trunk groups?; and (3) If a Resp Org routes a toll-free call over a local interconnection trunk group utilizing CIC 0110, is the Resp Org required to pay the regional Bell operating company its tariffed switched access charges depending on the end points of the call? Domenico ordered the parties to file a notice of the FCC’s resolution no more than 14 days after its publication.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria for Northern California in San Francisco denied the parties’ March 6 joint stipulation to stay the AirTags privacy class action against Apple to seek an alternative means to resolve the dispute (see 2303080065), said his signed order Wednesday (docket 3:22-cv-07668). Plaintiffs Lauren Hughes and “Jane Doe” haven’t adequately explained “why it would be consistent with their duty to represent the proposed class members to delay the case for so long right at the outset,” said the judge’s rationale for his denial. The matter can be discussed further at the April 7 case management conference, said the order. “Apple need not respond to the amended complaint until some time after the conference,” it said. The AirTag location transmitter is “the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers,” alleges the class action brought against Apple by Hughes of Travis County, Texas, and Doe of Brooklyn, who both claim to be victims of AirTag stalking.
T-Mobile’s Tuesday sur-reply to plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone’s reply in support of their motion for appointment of a pretrial master for discovery was necessary to address “numerous new misleading (if not false) assertions and new arguments,” said the filing (docket 1:19-cv-07190) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.
There’s "no basis" for an email sender to sue the provider of an email service “just because some of the sender’s emails were sorted into users’ spam folders,” said Google’s reply Monday (docket 2:22-cv-01904) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento in support of its motion to dismiss the Republican National Committee’s complaint.
Briefing before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is now closed on the motion to transfer the 16 data breach class actions against T-Mobile for pretrial consolidation under a single district judge (see 2303030003), said a minute order entered Friday by JPML Clerk John Nichols. Parties in the 16 class actions “remain under a duty” to notify Nichols promptly of potential tag-along actions, plus any development “that moots the motion or fully disposes of any action on the motion,” it said. Parties in any potential tag-along action may file an “interested party response,” but must do so promptly, it said.
Core Communications started the legal fight to recover $11.4 million in unpaid charges for access services it provided to AT&T, so Core “must show that it provided those services as set forth in the governing tariffs,” said a memorandum signed Thursday by U.S. District Judge Joshua Wolson for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. That means Core “bears the burden of demonstrating that its transmission of the toll-free robocalls at issue in this case” constitutes switched access service, as defined in its tariffs, it said. The two sides have engaged in finger-pointing for months over which bears the burden of showing that the calls at issue were legitimate and not improper robocalls (see 2212280001). AT&T refused to pay Core for the access services, claiming nearly 100% of the calls that CoreTel affiliates in Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia connected were fraudulent. But Core says AT&T’s claims of fraud “are at most an affirmative defense for which AT&T bears the burden of proof in this litigation.” The language in the memorandum suggested Wolson’s patience was beginning to wear thin from the bickering between the two sides. “This case involves a large amount of data over a significant period of time,” and it seems neither party “wants to bear the burden of having to grapple with all of it,” said the memorandum. Though AT&T “repeats the refrain” that these calls are illegitimate, fraudulent or otherwise improper, “it need not prove the calls’ illegitimacy to argue that Core cannot satisfy each element of its breach of tariff claims,” said the judge. But to the extent that AT&T “also intends to defend itself by pointing to Core’s alleged failures to police 8YY traffic” in violation of various FCC orders and regulations, then AT&T “must bear the burden of establishing that affirmative defense,” said the memorandum.
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