St. Joseph, Missouri, denies its rejection of AT&T’s application for a conditional use permit to build a 175-foot cell tower was unlawful, said the city’s answer Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Western Missouri in St. Joseph. AT&T’s Feb. 22 complaint (docket 5:23-cv-06023), consolidated with a similar case (docket 5:23-cv-06114), alleges the city’s denial prohibits the provision of personal wireless services, in violation of the Telecommunications Act and Missouri’s Uniform Wireless Communications Infrastructure Deployment Act.

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.

Microsoft’s past conduct “provides a preview” of a combined Microsoft/Activision if the tech giant consummates its acquisition of the video games company, said the FTC’s Monday complaint (docket 3:23-cv-02880) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco, seeking a temporary restraining order against the deal. "Microsoft and Activision have represented ... that they may consummate the Proposed Acquisition at any time without any further notice" to the commission, said the redacted complaint.

Amazon removed to U.S. District Court for Southern New York from New York Supreme Court the May 12 petition of third-party seller Longyan Junkai Information Technology to vacate a $461,000 arbitration award decided in Amazon’s favor, said its notice of removal Friday (docket 1:23-cv-04869). The contested money includes sales proceeds that Amazon refused to disperse to Longyan Junkai after discovering it was selling counterfeit goods on the Amazon store, it said.

Plaintiffs’ opposition to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s (D) motion to dismiss their freedom of speech lawsuit (see 2306060054) is “based entirely on their distorted reading” of California’s AB 587 and speculation that Bonta will use the statute to “punish social media companies” that don’t “aggressively moderate ‘hate speech,’ ‘misinformation’ and other disfavored content on their platforms,” the AG said Monday in a reply (docket 2:23-cv-02705) in support of his motion to dismiss an amended freedom of speech complaint in U.S. District Court for Western California in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for Southern New York in Manhattan reversed his own decision not to delay the Aug. 7 jury trial of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for their roles in the robocall campaign to suppress Black citizens' mail-in votes in the 2020 election. His order Monday (docket 1:20-cv-08668) directed the parties to confer and submit within five days a list of “agreed-upon proposed trial dates set for the fall.”

Communications Litigation Today is tracking the following lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions:

Google opposes two motions seeking to file amicus briefs in the consolidated Google Pay store litigation in support of the plaintiffs’ opposition to Google’s motion to exclude the “merits opinions” of Boston University economics professor Marc Rysman, said Google’s opposition Friday (docket 3:21-md-02981) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. The American Antitrust Institute and a group of three economists, including former FCC chief economist Katja Seim, filed the motions May 26.

Though DOJ and its state co-plaintiffs welcome production of six of 21 documents challenged by Google in the antitrust suit over the company’s digital advertising business, its reversal of its prior privilege determinations “underscores the overbreadth of Google's claims of privilege in the first place.” So said DOJ’s reply Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-00108) in support of Google’s motion for in camera inspection and to compel production of documents wrongfully withheld as privileged in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia in Alexandria.

Another set of defendants among the network of companies and individuals accused by the FTC of delivering tens of millions debt relief robocalls to U.S. consumers via the Stratics Networks ringless voicemail (RVM) platform (see 2302170032) moved Thursday to dismiss the agency’s complaint. But, unlike the motion to dismiss a day earlier from Ace Business Solutions for failure to state a claim (see 2306090032), defendant Atlas and its top officers argue the case should be thrown out because RVMs don’t qualify as phone calls for the purposes of the Telemarketing Sales Rule.