Summary Judgment Precluded by Dispute Over Alleged Material Misrepresentation in Unsolicited Commercial Email

In Wagner v. Digital Publishing Corporation et al., Case No. C 13-04952 (U.S. District Court, N.D. California, order entered October 10, 2014), the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held that a triable issue over whether the “From” lines, domain names, and subject lines of unsolicited commercial emails contained material misrepresentations defeats partial summary judgment on plaintiff’s state law claims. The court held there were genuine issues of material fact about whether the companies listed as the registrants of the domain names from which the emails were sent were valid entities when the emails were sent. It also held there was no evidence that the defendants used privately registered domain names to conceal their identities as part of the emails, and that a reasonable juror could find that the subject lines were too good to be true and thus unlikely to mislead a recipient.