Four firms and attorneys -- Marc Seltzer of Susman Godfrey, Hollis Salzman of Robins Kaplan, Howard Langer of Langer Grogan and Scott Martin of Hausfeld -- were appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and DirecTV. In an order (in Pacer) Monday, U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell of Los Angeles also ordered creation of a Plaintiffs' Steering Committee of Richard Koffman of Cohen Milstein and Arthur Murray of Murray Law Firm to co-chair it and three additional members to be determined by the co-lead plaintiffs' counsel and submitted to the court for approval. Dena Sharp of Girard Gibbs had objected to the proposal on the grounds she should be part of the leadership structure, and in her order the judge said the appointed firms "will best represent the plaintiffs in the case ... given these firms' and their respective attorneys' abilities to cooperate and make decision on behalf of the Plaintiffs thus far." Residential and commercial buyers of the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package through DirecTV are suing, alleging they broke antitrust laws by giving the satellite company exclusive rights to live out-of-market games (see 1512300027). In a separate order (in Pacer) Monday, the court ordered the 27 class-action complaints filed against DirecTV and the NFL be consolidated, saying those pending actions involve many of the same defendants and factual allegations and the defendants didn’t oppose consolidation. The consolidated complaint is to be filed by June 24, the judge ordered.

FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich said last week's federal court ruling upholding the commission's summary decision against John Fanning, who operated the now-defunct Jerk.com, made it clear his "misrepresentations in this case were harmful to consumers." Rich said in a Wednesday statement the FTC "will closely monitor the defendant’s compliance with the order, as we do in all our cases.” The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said May 9 it agreed with the commission's findings that the reputation website -- which passed off content as user-generated when it actually collected and misused content from Facebook -- misrepresented the source of its content and membership benefits (see 1404080080 and 1503250067). The FTC issued a summary decision in March 2015 against the site and Fanning, including barring him from making further deceptive statements, requiring him to keep advertising and marketing records and notifying the commission of any complaints about the misleading and deceptive statements. The federal court struck down parts of the remedial order's compliance monitoring provisions for Fanning, saying they were "overbroad." The court said the FTC order required Fanning to inform the commission of his future business affiliations and employment even if it's unrelated to the unlawful activity. The ruling said the commission acknowledged at oral argument that the "provision would ostensibly require Fanning to report if he was a waiter at a restaurant." Fanning, who is a Napster co-founder, did not comment in response to a direct message sent to his Twitter account.

Data broker Spokeo was handed a partial victory Monday when the Supreme Court ruled that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used incomplete analysis in deciding whether Virginia resident Thomas Robins, who filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for publishing incorrect information about him, suffered any "concrete" harm (see 1509090002). In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court sent Spokeo v. Robins back to the lower court, saying it "failed to consider both aspects of the injury-in-fact requirement." Justice Samuel Alito said in his majority opinion that a plaintiff is required "to allege an injury that is both 'concrete and particularized.'" The 9th Circuit focused on particularity but "overlooked" concreteness, and needs to consider both, he wrote. But Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, with Ginsburg writing, "I ... see no utility in returning this case to the Ninth Circuit to underscore what Robins' complaint already conveys concretely: Spokeo's misinformation 'cause[s] actual harm to [his] employment prospects.'" Robins sued "people search engine" Spokeo for publishing inaccurate information about his profile, "alleging that the company willfully failed to comply with the" Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires that consumer reporting agencies reasonably follow procedures to provide accurate data, the opinion said. Failure to do so results in penalties for a company. The 9th Circuit ruled Robins had legal standing to sue, but Spokeo appealed to the high court. Privacy and consumer groups sided with Robins, saying individuals shouldn't be limited in their ability to file claims since credit reports could affect loans and employment eligibility. "While we are disappointed in today's ruling, the Court has preserved the ability of citizens to protect their privacy rights under federal law,” said G.S. Hans, Center for Democracy and Technology policy counsel, in a statement. “The Court definitively recognized that intangible injuries, like those that implicate privacy rights, can be protected by private parties in federal court, which is a positive result. In practical terms, this is a punt -- one that privacy advocates will likely debate for the foreseeable future.”

ESPN ended its skinny bundle legal fight against Verizon. In joint statements Tuesday (see here and here), the companies said they settled ESPN's 2015 lawsuit about Verizon's offering programming packages that excluded some ESPN channels, allegedly in violation of contractual agreements (see 1504270071), but terms of the settlement won't be disclosed. Terry Denson, Verizon vice president-content strategy and acquisition, said the company "look[s] forward to further collaborating with them to deliver customers content across all of our platforms."

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' April decision in Yershov v. Gannett Satellite Information Network shouldn't play any role in the 3rd Circuit's handling of an appeal of an unsuccessful Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) complaint brought against Viacom and Google, the companies said in 3rd Circuit filings (see here and here, in Pacer) Friday. The Yershov decision focused on VPPA definitions of "consumer" and "personally identifiable information," neither of which has bearing on the VPPA claims against Google, that company said. It said Yershov included "unwarranted broadening of the statutory text" when it said GPS coordinates could constitute personally identifiable information under the VPPA. Viacom similarly contrasted the case with Yershov, saying the disclosures at play in the VPPA complaint against it and Google consist of IP addresses and cookie identifiers, not GPS data, and the plaintiffs haven't offered a strong argument how that could lead to identification. "The disclosures in this case do not state a VPPA claim even under Yershov," Viacom said. The original lawsuit brought on behalf of a putative class of minors whose data was tracked when they went to various Nickelodeon websites was dismissed in 2015 by a U.S. District judge in Newark, New Jersey (see 1501220056), and the plaintiffs said in a 3rd Circuit filing (in Pacer) Thursday that the Viacom/Google disclosures included "even more detailed information than what was alleged in Yershov." The 1st Circuit with Yershov "became the first federal appellate court to determine whether unique computing device identifiers constitute [personally identifiable information] under the VPPA," the plaintiffs said, saying the 3rd Circuit should "adopt the well-reasoned logic of Yershov" and reverse the Newark court's decision. The 1st Circuit in Yershov reversed a U.S. District Court decision that Gannett did disclose information about a USA Today Mobile App user to a third party, but that user Alexander Yershov wasn't a consumer under VPPA.

A federal judge in San Francisco rejected Facebook's request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Illinois users alleging the social media company “amassed users’ biometric data secretly and without consent.” U.S. District Judge James Donato in his Thursday ruling (in Pacer) also dismissed the company’s request for summary judgment, saying if California law is applied -- which Facebook wanted -- then Illinois' policy protecting its citizens' privacy interests in their biometric data "would be written out of existence." The ruling means the case will proceed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. About a year ago, plaintiffs Carlo Licata, Nimesh Patel and Adam Pezen filed three separate suits, later consolidated and the case transferred to California. The three claim Facebook “automatically enrolled millions of Illinoisans” into its "Tag Suggestions" program, launched in 2010, which uses advanced facial recognition technology to identify people in users' uploaded photographs. Facebook argued the definition of “biometric identifier” and “biometric information” in the Illinois statute excludes photos and information derived from those photos. It said it gets all its biometric data “exclusively” from uploaded photographs. Donato has scheduled a case management conference for June 15. Facebook didn't comment Friday.

Warning that the $610,560 in damages a court ordered it to pay DirecTV would put it out of business, Exclaim Marketing is asking for a stay of enforcement until its appeal of those damages is finally decided, it said in a motion (in Pacer) Tuesday in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The direct broadcast satellite marketing firm sued DirecTV in 2015, alleging DirecTV actively sought to interfere in Exclaim's business relationships with independent satellite dealers, with the court ultimately overturning the jury's verdict in Exclaim's favor and awarding DirecTV its trademark infringement counterclaim. In its appellate motion, Exclaim said it also filed a motion to stay enforcement with the U.S. District Court in New Bern, North Carolina, because enforcement of the award would cause "irreparable" harm. It also said it believes it can show it likely will prevail on appeal because DirecTV didn't show sufficient evidence to support the award, the stay wouldn't harm DirecTV and the public interest wouldn't favor Exclaim's end while issues still are being litigated -- all of which satisfy the Hilton v. Braunskill test for granting a stay, it said. DirecTV didn't comment Wednesday.

Nine companies with which Vizio may have shared data from its Inscape viewer-tracking feature were named as co-defendants in the latest complaint (in Pacer) against the smart TV maker. Two dozen class-action suits alleging violations of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act and other offenses have been filed against Vizio since November. The so-called “data partners” that were named for the first time in the latest suit are advertising and marketing analytics firms that have collaborated with Vizio to track, receive, exchange and/or repackage the personally identifiable information of Vizio customers, alleged the April 20 complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, the same court in which the other class-action complaints against Vizio were recently “centralized” (see 1604150001). Named as co-defendants with Vizio in the April 20 complaint were Alphonso, AudienceXpress, Interpublic Group, iSpot.tv, Lotame Solutions, Tapad, TubeMogul, WPP Group USA and Xaxis. Representatives of the various defendants didn’t comment, nor has Vizio.

A federal court levied a $13.4 million judgment against computer-financing company BlueHippo and CEO Joseph Rensin to compensate nearly 56,000 consumers who paid for computers but didn't receive them, the FTC said in a Monday news release. U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in New York ordered Rensin to pay $8 million into a redress fund and the remaining amount at a later time. In 2008, BlueHippo settled an FTC lawsuit that alleged the company didn't deliver personal computers that customers with poor credit ratings had ordered and paid for and also failed to disclose key parts of its refund policy to consumers, the commission said. But the FTC went back to court in 2009, alleging the company "flouted" the terms of that settlement (see 0911130160). After a hearing, the court granted the FTC's contempt motion against the company and Rensin, but entered a judgment of only $609,000, which the commission said it appealed. In his April 19 opinion and order, Crotty rejected Rensin's argument that he was deprived of due process. The Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland said that BlueHippo filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009. Rensin's LinkedIn profile said he is CEO of private equity firm AGX Funds, but its phone number is disconnected. A message sent through AGX's website for comment wasn't answered.

Google petitioned the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its ruling earlier this month that vacated a 2015 U.S. District Court ruling in Jackson, Mississippi, which granted the company a preliminary injunction against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood barring him from enforcing his subpoena looking into Google’s search practices. Google argued in its petition (in Pacer), posted online Wednesday, that a rehearing is needed because Hood withdrew his subpoena Friday. Hood, a Democrat, told reporters after the 5th Circuit released its ruling that his office would “re-evaluate” how to proceed with enforcing the subpoena. The 5th Circuit ruled that Judge Henry Wingate’s injunction “covers a fuzzily defined range of enforcement actions that do not appear imminent” (see 1604110058). “The record establishes that Google faces a genuine threat of enforcement action, one that is not imaginary, speculative, or chimerical,” Google said in its petition. Although Hood had withdrawn his original subpoena, Google said he had also reminded the company that it was bound by a “litigation hold” to preserve evidence related to Google’s business practices. “No one can reasonably be expected to brush off a state attorney general’s specific allegations of unlawful conduct and repeated threats of enforcement action,” Google said. “The law does not require Google to either accede to Hood’s demands or call his bluff.” Hood’s office didn’t immediately comment Thursday.