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.

A public nuisance and negligence class action (docket 3:23-cv-01643) against social media companies by the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey is the latest case poised for transfer, with the recent wave of like-minded cases, to the U.S. Court for the Northern District of California for consolidation with the existing personal injury social media cases, James Cecchi, director of Carella Byrne's class-action practice in Roseland, New Jersey, emailed Communications Litigation Today Tuesday.

Plaintiffs in a November privacy class action against Cox Media admitted in a first amended complaint (1:22-cv-04462) they accessed terms of service -- before filing their privacy class action -- agreeing to resolve all disputes through arbitration, said the company’s Monday motion to compel arbitration in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta

The plaintiffs who won summary judgment March 8 against defendants Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for their roles in the threatening and intimidating robocall to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the 2020 election (see 2303090003) plan to seek compensatory and punitive damages, statutory penalties, disgorgement of profits, injunctive relief and attorney’s fees and costs, they wrote U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in a letter Tuesday (docket 1:20-cv-08668). Marrero had ordered the plaintiffs to file a joint letter by the Wednesday deadline on the “prospective relief sought.”

“Sanctions are warranted” against Google for failing to preserve messages on its internal chat system before and during the antitrust multidistrict litigation challenging Google’s Play Store practices as anticompetitive, said a “findings of fact” order signed Tuesday (docket 3:21-md-02981) by U.S. District Judge James Donato for Northern California in San Francisco. The plaintiffs in the four consolidated cases that comprise the MDL include 38 states and the District of Columbia, plus Epic Games, the Match Group and a group of consumers, all alleging Google monopolized Android app distribution and availability through Google Play.

NAB will take the FCC to court unless it delays the 2022 quadrennial review and concludes the 2018 QR, said an ex parte filing Wednesday and broadcast industry officials in interviews, “The Commission has no lawful basis for withholding the belated 2018 review, and that failure independently threatens the viability of the 2022 review,” said the filing in docket 22-459. Multiple broadcast attorneys said the trade group is resolved to pursue the matter in court and without FCC action NAB will petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus. The filing gives the agency until April 12 to toll the 2022 QR proceeding and conclude the 2018 iteration. It’s not likely the FCC will agree to the request, attorneys said.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

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.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl granted plaintiff Strike 3 Holdings’ motion for discovery, permitting it to serve a subpoena on Verizon Fios for the limited purpose of obtaining the name and address of defendant “John Doe” in a copyright infringement lawsuit, said a Thursday order (docket 1:23-cv-01997) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn.

Standard General, Tegna and Cox Media Group, in court filings Monday challenging the FCC’s hearing designation order (HDO), targeted the FCC’s merger review process, Holly Saurer’s dual role as Media Bureau chief and as Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s media adviser, and the FCC’s administrative law judge. The companies are seeking a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by April 21.