The Golden State Warriors and beacon technology company Signal360 filed on Tuesday a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against them that claims the team’s official mobile app unlawfully recorded fan conversations without consent.
The Warriors and Signal 360, represented by Cooley LLP, responded to those claims from the class action suit filed by New York Resident LaTisha Satchell that seeks “$100 per class member, per day of defendants’ violations, or $10,000 per Class member.”
“Plaintiff goes through great pains to portray this technology in sinister, anthropomorphic terms (e.g., “the App is listening”), but the truth bears little resemblance to the sensationalist claims of the Complaint,” Cooley lawyer Whitty Somvichian wrote in the motion obtained by The Recorder. “If this case proceeds, Defendants are fully prepared to show that the beacon technology does not ‘record’ or ‘intercept’ anyone’s communications; indeed, it cannot do so by design.”
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According to the motion, Satchell fails to prove that the defendants ever officially “acquired” any conversations that were said to have been recorded. The recordings alleged by Satchell never left user’s phones, the complaint says.
“What Plaintiff neglects to explain (but presumably knows based on her counsel’s purported ‘forensic; testing…is that the Signal360 beacon signals are inaudible and the App is programmed to detect only signals in that specific inaudible frequency, meaning the App does not record anyone’s communications within the meaning of the Wiretap Act,” Somvichian wrote.
“For purpose of this Motion, the most critical fact is that all of the alleged acts are done by the App on the user’s phone and no audio data ever leaves the device.”
Satchell also originally claimed that her phone suffered, “wear and tear” as well as a loss of battery power while the Warriors app was running. Somvichian argues that Satchell’s claims do not provide sufficient instance of injury caused by a breach of privacy to warrant support of the Wiretap Act.
YinzCam, the app’s developer, filed a separate motion to dismiss, according to The Recorder.
Satchell is represented by Edelson PC. Edelson recently filed a similar suit on behalf of Indiana resident Alan Rackemann alleging near identical claims against the Indianapolis Colts’ mobile app and LISNR.