Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) reached a settlement agreement Thursday in his October 2021 complaint alleging that Startel Communications and its CEO Wanda Hall assisted actors in India, the Philippines and Singapore to inundate Indiana residents with scam robocalls in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule. Startel and Hall “knew or consciously avoided knowing these calls were illegal,” alleged his complaint.

A lawsuit against Google by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) over the company’s use of biometric data in photo apps and devices could lead to a massive payout based on recent large settlements in similar cases against Google and Facebook under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), attorneys told us Thursday. “All across the state, everyday Texans have become unwitting cash cows being milked by Google for profits,” said the complaint, filed Thursday in the state's District Court of Midland County.

Both sides in AT&T’s infrastructure lawsuit against the village of Muttontown, New York, face an Oct. 31 deadline for filing a two-page joint status report that describes whether they oppose a motion to intervene in the case filed by village resident Russell McRory (see 2210180029), said a text order Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-05524) from U.S. Magistrate Judge Lee Dunst for Eastern New York in Central Islip.

Black voters from the Atlanta area pressed a federal appeals court to affirm a lower court’s finding that Georgia’s elections system for the Public Service Commission illegally dilutes Black votes in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In a Wednesday brief in case 22-12593, the appellee group disagreed with the state that partisanship, not race, explained why the Georgia PSC has had mainly white commissioners.

The renewed application from Chinese company Sailed Technology asking the U.S. District Court for Western Washington to compel discovery from Amazon for a patent infringement case in China is the culmination of “a seven-year litigation campaign against Amazon, consisting of dozens of lawsuits in China and three lawsuits here in the U.S.,” said Amazon’s response Monday (docket 2:22-cv-01396). Sailed seeks to serve subpoenas on Amazon for deposition testimony and documents connected with a case brought in an intellectual property court in Nanjing, China, in which Amazon Echo and Fire products are alleged to have infringed one or more Sailed patents (see 2210110001).

The “statutory damages” provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act “violate the safeguards guaranteed” by the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and 14th amendments “because they constitute excessive fines and are grossly disproportionate to any actual harm that may be suffered” by TCPA plaintiffs, said Comcast's answer Wednesday (docket 0:22-cv-02377) to the Sept. 28 TCPA complaint of consumer Chester Graham in U.S. District Court for Minnesota.

Tech companies “are largely free to create and operate online platforms without legal consequences for the negative outcomes of their products” because of Communications Decency Act Section 230, said an investigative report Tuesday from the Office of the New York Attorney General on the role of online platforms in the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo that killed 10 and wounded three. Section 230 allows “too much legal immunity” for platforms, even “when a platform allows users to post and share unlawful content,” it said.

AT&T Mobility needs until Nov. 21 to answer the Sept. 19 Communications Workers of America complaint to compel arbitration for DirecTV employees who CWA alleges were “unjustly” terminated during the summer of 2021 and are entitled to a grievance process under an existing collective bargaining agreement. Additional time is needed “to continue investigating the factual and legal basis” of CWA’s claims, “in advance of filing an appropriate response,” said an unopposed motion Monday (docket 1:22-cv-00954) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin.

Communications Litigation Today is providing readers with the 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.

Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward “has made no secret of her support for Donald Trump,” her concerns about the “integrity” of the 2020 election or her role in sending “an alternate slate of electors” to Washington, she told the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Monday in her emergency motion for an injunction, pending appeal, to block T-Mobile’s release of her phone records under subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Select Committee (see 2210170001). The “only reason” to subpoena Ward’s phone records “is to get at those with whom she associated and to question them about their communications” with the state GOP chair, she said in her reply (docket 22-16473) to the committee’s opposition.