Tag Archives: Lawsuit

Twitter-Musk Lawsuit Scheduled For October

Twitter, ,

Twitter won its first legal fight against Elon Musk on Tuesday when a Delaware judge granted the company’s request to fast-track its lawsuit seeking to compel the world’s richest person to complete his $44 billion purchase of the social-media site, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the chief judge of the Delaware Chancery Court, ordered a five-day trial in October, over Mr. Musk’s objections. Chancellor McCormick said the case should be resolved quickly, agreeing with Twitter’s claim that it could be harmed by uncertainty about its future as a public company.

“Those concerns are on full display in the present case,” Chancellor McCormick said. “Typically, the longer the merger transaction remains in limbo, the larger the cloud of uncertainty cast over the company and the greater the risk of irreparable harm to the sellers.”

The Verge reported: This is a win for Twitter, which asked for a shorter timeframe than Musk. The trial will be five days – longer than Twitter asked for but shorter than Musk did. The exact dates have not yet been scheduled.

According to The Verge, Twitter’s counsel said that Musk’s conduct was “inexcusable.” Musk has held up an employee retention plan and is engaging in “needless value destruction”. Musk’s lawyers suggested that Twitter was giving Musk the run-around with bot data. Both teams of lawyers agreed that Musk’s team had run millions of queries on Twitter’s firehose, a real-time feed of Tweets as they are sent.

The Verge contributed the 62-page lawsuit to DocumentCloud.

Politico reported: This lawsuit marks the latest in a monthlong back-and-forth between Twitter and Musk over his April offer to buy the platform for $54.20 per share and take the company private. Market conditions have since depressed Twitter’s value. Musk is trying to get out of the deal over claims that the company has failed to cooperate with his endeavors to determine the number of fake accounts on the platform.

According to Politico, a Twitter spokesperson said the company is “pleased that the court agreed to an expedite the trial.” Twitter’s attorney William Savitt said during the Tuesday hearing, “Musk has been and remains contractually obligated to use his best efforts to close this deal. What he’s doing is the exact opposite of best efforts.”

The Guardian reported that on July 8, Musk said he was terminating the deal for three broad reasons: Twitter had breached the agreement by failing to provide enough information on spam accounts; that it had misrepresented the number of spam accounts in its disclosures to the US financial watchdog; and that it had breached the agreement by failing to consult with him when firing senior employees recently.

Based on what I’ve read on Twitter, there are Elon Musk fans who hope that Elon Musk will buy Twitter, because they believe he will never ban any content or account from the site. There are also people who said they will leave Twitter if Elon Musk buys it.

Apple Accused Of Antitrust Violations Over Apple Pay

Apple, ,

Apple was sued on Monday, July 18, in a proposed class action by payment card issuers accusing the iPhone maker of abusing its market power in mobile devices to thwart competition for its Apple Pay mobile wallet, Reuters reported.

According to a complaint filed in San Francisco federal court, Apple “coerces” customers who use smartphones, smart watches and tablets into using its own wallet for contactless payments, unlike makers of Android-based devices that let consumers choose wallets such as Google Pay and Samsung Pay.

The plaintiff in this complaint is Iowa’s Affinity Credit Union, who said Apple’s anticompetitive conduct forces the more than 4,000 banks and credit unions that use Apple Pay to pay at least $1 billion of excess fees annually for the privilege. According to Reuters, Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

MacRumors reported that the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California. The complaint specifically accuses Apple of multiple violations of the federal Sherman Act by “tying” Apple Pay to its mobile devices and monopolizing the “tap and pay iOS mobile wallet market.”

The Verge reported the Plaintiffs claim that Apple has an illegal monopoly over contactless payments on the iPhone, letting it force card issuers into paying fees (via Bloomberg). The suit is being kicked off by Iowa-based Affinity Credit Union, which issues debit and credit cards that are compatible with Apple Pay, but the company’s lawyers hope to make it a class-action case so other card issuers can join the lawsuit.

According to The Verge, lawsuits aren’t automatically granted class-action status – a judge has to decide whether or not to grant it. However, the law firm handling the case for Affinity, Hagens Berman, has a bit of a track record with class-action suits against Apple. It was involved with getting developers a $100 million settlement after alleging that the App Store’s rules were unfair, as well as with the ebook price fixing case that ended with Apple returning around $400 million back to customers.

The complaint is against Defendant Apple Inc., and for Plaintiff Affinity Credit Union, on its own behalf and that of all similarly situated payment card issuers.

Based on everything I’ve read about this lawsuit, it appears to be focused on getting banks and credit unions a reimbursement for the fees that they had to pay in order to offer their customers an Apple Card. The lawyers for Affinity Credit Union want a class-action lawsuit, which could potentially erase the fees that credit unions were charged by Apple.

It does not mean that anyone with an Apple Card can join in this particular class action lawsuit, or that card holders will benefit financially in any way – no matter what the final decision turns out to be. In my opinion, this is a lawsuit that is being presented in an effort to reimburse a specific credit union.

Court Allows Lawsuit By Woman Who Says She Helped Create Pinterest

Pinterest,

Bloomberg reported that Pinterest Inc. must face a lawsuit from a digital marketing strategist who says she helped conceive the social media platform, a California judge ruled. According to Bloomberg, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Seabolt denied the company’s motion to dismiss the suit, but he eliminated co-founder Paul Sciarra as a defendant because he left Pinterest a decade ago.

Bloomberg reported that Christine Martinez sued the company in September, saying she contributed key ideas to the platform but was never compensated by founders Bill Silbermann and Sciarra. According to her complaint, Oakland resident Martinez was friends with Silbrermann when he asked her to “salvage a failed shopping app” that later became Pinterest.

She says she developed some of the main concepts for the platform, including features that allowed users to create “pinboards” reflecting their cultural tastes and created a marketing plan to enlist bloggers to recruit users. Martinez claims she was so integral to the site’s creation that Silbermann and Sciarra embedded her name in the platform’s code.

The New York Times provided some background information (in 2021). The New York Times reported that when Pinterest went public in 2019, Christine Martinez’s friends sent congratulations. She had worked closely with the founders of the digital pinboard in its earliest days, and her friends through she would get rich alongside them. But as Pinterest’s stock price rose, turning its founders into billionaires, Ms. Martinez realized she would not be compensated or credited for her contributions, she said.

According to The New York Times, Ms. Martinez was never formally employed by Pinterest, nor did she ask for a contract. She was not given stock, though she said Pinterest’s founders had verbally agreed to compensate her many times. The New York Times also reported that other women who were former Pinterest employees wrote on Twitter about the pay disparities, retaliation, and sexist, racist comments they had experienced at the company. Pinterest’s former chief operating, Francoise Brougher, sued Pinterest, claiming gender discrimination and retaliation.

Engadget reported that Ms. Martinez filled a lawsuit against Pinterest in September. In December, the company filed a motion to dismiss it. Pinterest argued that Ms. Martinez’s claimed were too old to fall within the statute of limitations. Judge Seabolt disagreed. He stated that Ms. Martinez “sufficiently alleges” the she and the Pinterest founders agreed to deferred compensation. Pinterest went public in 2019, an event that Seabolt deemed “transformative” and his view sealed the company’s obligation to pay Ms. Martinez.

These kinds of lawsuits are important. They serve as a way to prevent employers from intentionally discriminating against the women they hired. It makes absolutely no sense to me why the Pinterest founders agreed to deferred compensation – and then (perhaps intentionally) failed to pay Ms. Martinez the money they owed her for the work she did on Pinterest.

Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Seeking To Lift Twitter Ban

Twitter,

A judge dismissed a lawsuit by former President Donald Trump seeking to lift his ban from Twitter, CNBC reported. Twitter banned Trump on January 8, 2021, citing the risk of the incitement of further violence on the heels of the Capitol riot by a mob of supporters of the then-president two days earlier, CNBC reported.

Trump, the American Conservative Union, and five individuals had sued Twitter and its co-founder Jack Dorsey last year on behalf of themselves and a class of other Twitter users who had been booted from the app.

Judge Donato’s ruling comes nearly two weeks after Trump told CNBC he had no interest in returning to Twitter even if his ban were to be lifted by Elon Musk, the Tesla chief whose $44 billion offer to buy Twitter has been accepted by the company’s board.

CNBC also reported that before the ban, Trump was an avid Twitter user, tweeting an average of more than 30 posts per day toward the end of his presidency. At the time of the ban, Trump had nearly 90 million followers on Twitter. His suit alleged that Twitter violated the plaintiff’s First Amendment rights to free speech, arguing that the bans were due to pressure on the company by Democratic members of Congress.

The Verge reported that Judge James Donato wrote that “Plaintiffs are not starting from a position of strength” in the first paragraph of his analysis.

The Verge also reported that Judge Donato determined that Twitter was not operating as a state actor when it banned Trump – a claim Trump made by noting that some lawmakers had called on Twitter to remove him from the platform.

“Legislators are perfectly free to express opinions without being deemed the official voice of the State,” the ruling says, dismissing a “grab bag” of allegations quoting various Democratic elected officials calling for a ban. Even strident congressional commentary, it concludes, “fits within the normal boundaries of a congressional investigation, as opposed to threats of punitive state action.”

Trump and his fellow plaintiffs also had a Section 230 claim – which failed. Politico reported that Judge Donato’s 17-page decision also rejected arguments from Trump attorneys that a controversial 1996 law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act led to the then-president’s de-platforming in January of last year.

Politico reported that the Section 230 law allows internet sites to police message boards and other user postings without incurring potential liability as a publisher of the content. According to Politico, Judge Denato wrote, “The government cannot plausibly be said to have compelled Twitter’s action through Section 230, which in any event imposed no affirmative obligations on Twitter to act in any particular way.”

Trump’s lawsuits against Facebook and YouTube remain pending. Perhaps the lawyers representing Trump and his fellow plaintiffs will have learned that the Section 230 claim is not going to be compelling to a judge. I’m wondering why the Twitter lawsuit even got this far, considering that Trump has stated that he doesn’t want to go back on Twitter.

Just to clarify, if the government throws you in jail for speech that it disagrees with – that’s a violation of your Freedom of Speech. If a social media site suspends you from the platform because you broke its rules regarding hate speech, inciting violence, etc. – that’s not a violation of your Freedom of Speech. Social Media websites are not part of any state of federal branch of government.

Facebook Settles Claims Over Discrimination Against U.S. Workers

Facebook,

Facebook settled claims that it refused to recruit or hire U.S. workers for positions it set aside for temporary visa holders, CNBC reported. According to CNBC, Facebook settled with not only the Department of Labor, but also the Department of Justice. These were two separate lawsuits.The Department of Justice (DOJ) posted a release on its website that shared information about these lawsuits.

The Justice Department’s settlement resolves its claims that Facebook routinely refused to recruit, consider or hire U.S. workers, a group that includes U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, asylees, refugees and lawful permanent residents, for positions it has reserved for temporary visa holders in connection with the PERM process. Additionally, the Labor Department’s settlement resolves issues it separately identified through audit examinations of Facebook’s recruitment activities related to its PERM applications filed with the Employment and Training Administration’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC).

PERM stands for “permanent labor certification program.”

Specifically, the lawsuit alleged that, in contrast to its standard recruitment practices, Facebook used recruiting methods designed to deter U.S. workers who applies to the positions, such as requiring applications to be submitted by mail only; refused to consider U.S. workers who applied to the positions; and hired only temporary visa holders.

According to the Justice Department’s lawsuit, Facebook’s hiring for these positions intentionally discriminated against U.S. workers because of their citizenship or immigration status, in violation of the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Under the DOJ’s settlement, Facebook will pay a civil penalty of $4.75 million to the United States, will pay up to $9.5 million to eligible victims of Facebook’s alleged discrimination, and train its employees on the anti-discrimination requirements of the INA. It also must accept electronic resumes or applications from all U.S. workers who apply.

The DOJ says that this civil penalty backpay fund represents the largest fine and monetary award that the Department of Justice ever has recovered in the 35-year history of the INA’s anti-discrimination provision.

Facebook has been in a bit of trouble lately. The Wall Street Journal reported on Facebook documents that had been leaked to the newspaper. A whistleblower shared what she knew about the behind the scenes of Facebook on “60 Minutes”.

Today, Facebook was fined by the Department of Justice for being less than honest regarding hiring workers. It is a small fine, compared to the vast wealth of Facebook – but it still sends a message to Facebook to stop being awful.

Texas Sued Over Law That Stops Social Media Sites from Banning Users

Social Media,

The State of Texas has been sued over its new law that prevents social media platforms from banning users over their political views, The Texas Tribune reported.

The Texas bill is called HB 20. Governor Greg Abbott signed it into law. According to The Texas Tribune, the law states that “social media platforms with over 50 million monthly users in the U.S. – a threshold that includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube – must publicly report details about content removal and account suspensions biannually. The platforms are also required to establish an easily accessible complaint system, where users could flag violations of the law.”

The lawsuit was filed by NetChoice, LLC and Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represent Google and Twitter in the lawsuit. It was filed against Texas Governor Ken Paxton (in his official capacity as Attorney General of Texas). The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas Austin Division.

Here is a key point from the lawsuit:

…The Commerce Clause does not permit a single state to dictate the rules of content for the global Internet. H.B. 20 would regulate wholly-out-of-state conduct – balkanizing the Internet by imposing onerous extraterritorial regulation on the operation of covered social media platforms. This vastly exceeds Texas’s regulatory purview and will impede commerce across the Internet…

USA Today described this Texas law as a “social media censorship law”. According to USA Today, “Texas lawmakers were motivated in large part by the suspensions of former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol”.

Personally, I don’t think this Texas law stands much of a chance in court. USA Today reported that a federal judge blocked a similar Florida law in June, one day before it could take effect.

Blizzard Sues Company that Made Overwatch Cheat Bot

Gaming, ,

Blizzard Entertainment logoBlizzard Entertainment, creator of the popular Overwatch game, has banned players who were cheating. Recently, Blizzard sued a company that made a cheat bot called “Watchover Tyrant” for copyright infringement.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court Central District of California on July 1, 2016. The case is called Blizzard Entertainment v. Bossland GMBH. Blizzard is suing the bot maker for trafficking in circumvention devices, inducement to infringe copyright, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, intentional interference with contractual relations, and unfair competition.

Blizzard states that the Bossland Hacks “have caused, and are continuing to cause, massive and irreparable harm to Blizzard.” It also states: “The Bossland Hacks destroy the integrity of the Blizzard Games, thereby alienating and frustrating legitimate players and diverting revenue from Blizzard to Defendants.”

In the lawsuit, Blizzard Entertainment states that Bossland GmbH is a German company that has created several Buddy Bot software programs that, when installed on a user’s computer, enable that player to automate his or her play of Blizzard’s games. Blizzard included a list of all the Buddy Bots, which Blizzard game each bot is being used in, and a description of the harm this causes to not only Blizzard, but also to Blizzard’s players (who aren’t cheating).

A section of the lawsuit is about the Overwatch cheat (called Watchover Tyrant) and the unfair advantage it gives players. Blizzard notes that Bossland GmbH is making money from selling its bots to players. Blizzard states that this Overwatch cheat was released just days after the release of Overwatch, and says that Bossland GmbH is “attempting to destroy or irreparably harm that game before it even has had a chance to fully flourish.”

In other words, the lawsuit is primarily about the Watchover Tyrant cheat bot. But it is also about all the other cheat bots that connect to other Blizzard games that Bossland GmbH sells.

One of the things Blizzard is asking the court for is to require Bossland GmbH “to shut down the Bossland Hacks and any colorable copies thereof, hosted at any domain, address, location, or ISP”. Blizzard also wants the court to grant them “actual or statutory damage for copyright infringement and willful infringement.”