Online tax filing services H&R Block, TaxSlayer and TaxAct “secretly deployed” Meta's Pixel code, which intercepted and collected an Erie County, New York, man’s private, sensitive and confidential financial information, alleged a Friday privacy class action (docket 3:23-cv-00735) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

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.

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).

Social media companies are “ruthlessly extracting every dollar possible with callous disregard for the harm to mental health,” alleged a Thursday class action (docket 2:23-cv-00910) brought by the School District of the Chathams in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark. The suit is one of several filed recently by U.S. school districts -- including Mesa Public Schools in Arizona (see 2301270067) and suburban Seattle Kent School District (see 2301110029) -- hoping to force social media platforms to do more to protect minors from online bullying, predators and behaviors detrimental to their mental health.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judges appeared skeptical Friday of separate oral arguments from NAB, the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee and SoundExchange against the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling on rates for webcast music (dockets 21-1245 for NAB, 21-1243 for NRBNMLC, and 21-1244 for Sound Exchange). Judge Patricia Millett told SoundExchange's attorney that evidence in the record "blows up" his arguments and had a back-and-forth disagreement with another lawyer over whether asking the court to calculate a rate that wasn't in the record was permissible. “Should we be doing that as a court?” Judge Florence Pan asked in response to an NRB argument that the court should use data in the record to calculate an extrapolated royalty rate. “Are you asking us to make a fact-finding that the board did not?” Millett added.

The DOJ filed a complaint Thursday in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego on the FTC's behalf to stop a network of companies and individuals allegedly responsible for delivering “tens of millions” of unwanted VoIP and ringless voicemail (RVM) phony debt service robocalls to consumers nationwide. The case (docket 3:23-cv-00313) targets “the ecosystem of companies who perpetrate illegal telemarketing to cheat American consumers who are struggling financially,” said Samuel Levine, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection director.

T-Mobile seems “incapable of adequately protecting the information it maintains from and about its customers,” said a 17-count class action Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle (docket 2:23-cv-00211). It’s one of about a dozen complaints filed against T-Mobile since its most recent breach announcement Jan. 19.

The consolidated amended class action filed Wednesday against Discovery, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and CEO David Zaslav and Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels (see 2302100015) “asserts strict liability and negligence claims” for false and misleading statements made in the run-up to Discovery’s April 8 WarnerMedia buy from AT&T. The false statements Zaslav and Wiedenfels made in earnings calls alone are “actionable” under Section 12(a)(2) of the Securities Act, said the complaint (docket 1:22-cv-08171) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Love for Eastern Texas in Tyler granted DirecTV’s motion authorizing it to effect service of process of its fraud complaint on defendant Motasim Billah via Facebook and LinkedIn because he's believed to be living in Lahore, Pakistan, with an exact address unknown, said Love’s memorandum opinion and order Wednesday (docket 6:22-cv-00423).

Kochava filed a request for judicial notice Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Northern Idaho in Coeur D’Alene (docket 2:22-cv-00377) using comments from FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson on her plans to resign her post to support its motion to dismiss the FTC’s privacy complaint. The filing followed the FTC’s notice of supplemental authority Feb. 6 in support of its opposition to Kochava’s motion to dismiss (see Ref:2302070037]). Wilson voted with the FTC's Democratic majority in August to authorize the Kochava complaint.