DellaSalla et al v. Samba TV, Inc.
Summary
The Northern District of California granted in part and denied in part Samba TV’s motions to dismiss and to strike in a putative privacy class action. Several statutory claims (CIPA §§ 632, 638.5/638.51 and the Federal Wiretap Act) survived the pleading-stage challenge while other claims (CIPA § 631, CDAFA, UCL standing, and an independent injunctive claim) were dismissed with leave to amend. The court struck VPPA references but declined to strike nationwide class allegations at this early stage.
Litigation Status
Procedural Posture
Plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint alleging privacy and consumer-protection claims (including state CIPA claims, CDAFA, Wiretap Act, UCL, unjust enrichment, and injunctive relief). Samba moved to dismiss and to strike; after briefing and oral argument the court issued the April 21, 2026 order granting in part and denying in part the motions and gave Plaintiffs leave to further amend by May 12, 2026.
Reported Holding
The court granted in part and denied in part defendant Samba TV’s motions to dismiss and to strike. The court dismissed plaintiffs’ claims under CIPA § 631, CDAFA, the UCL (for lack of statutory standing), and plaintiffs’ independent injunctive-relief claim (and treated some as abandoned), but otherwise denied the motions — notably denying dismissal of CIPA §§ 632, 638.5, and 638.51 claims and denying dismissal of the Federal Wiretap Act claim. The court also struck references to the VPPA but declined to strike nationwide class allegations at this stage.
What the Court Decided
On April 21, 2026 the district court granted in part and denied in part Samba TV’s motions to dismiss and to strike: it (1) dismissed with leave to amend claims under Cal. Penal Code § 631, CDAFA (§ 502), the UCL (for lack of statutory standing), and an independent injunctive-relief claim; (2) denied dismissal of claims under CIPA §§ 632, 638.5, and 638.51; (3) denied dismissal of the Federal Wiretap Act claim (finding the crime-tort exception could apply at this early stage); and (4) granted the motion to strike references to the Video Privacy Protection Act but otherwise denied the motion to strike nationwide class allegations.
What the Court Did Not Decide
The court did not resolve the merits of the surviving claims, did not decide class certification, and did not resolve factual issues (including whether Samba acted as an interloper versus a party under the Wiretap Act) beyond the pleadings stage. The court also left open the possibility of further amendment and future dispositive or summary-judgment motions.
Significance
Neutral / mixed significance. Characterizations of significance describe how the matter has generally been discussed in tracked public sources; individual holdings are often narrow, procedural, or fact-specific, and this page does not state or imply broader holdings than the sources support.
What This Page Does and Does Not Say
This page reports what our tracked public sources say about this matter — including, where identified, the procedural posture (for example, a ruling on a motion to dismiss is not a final merits decision). It does not report legal conclusions beyond those sources, does not predict outcomes, and does not constitute legal advice.
Technologies at Issue
- Automatic Content Recognition (ACR)
- embedded smart-TV chipset
- device identifiers (IP address, GUID, Android ID/UUID, AAID, SessionID, SDADID, SMID, SambaID)
- identity graph / deterministic and probabilistic matching
Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: Samba TV, Inc., Mixpanel (third party referenced in complaint).
Statutes Invoked
- Cal. Penal Code §§ 631, 632, 638.50, 638.51; Cal. Penal Code § 502 (CDAFA); 18 U.S.C. § 2510 (Wiretap Act); Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200 (UCL)
Claims Asserted
- common-law invasion of privacy (intrusion upon seclusion)
- California Constitution invasion of privacy
- California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) § 631
- CIPA § 632
- CIPA §§ 638.5 / 638.51 (pen register/trap-and-trace)
- Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA), Cal. Penal Code § 502
- Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq.
- California Unfair Competition Law (UCL), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200
- unjust enrichment
- injunctive relief
Related Intelligence
Sources
About This Page
Publisher: Inspection-Ready Institute, Inc. (DBA Crandall Consulting), an independent website compliance and risk consultancy. We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice.
How this content is produced: Facts are extracted from publicly available sources — court and government materials, recognized legal press, professional analysis, and industry reports — by our litigation intelligence engine, stored with full source provenance, and rendered from the database. Risk guidelines are computed by a deterministic formula, never by an AI model directly. See the full methodology.
Limitations: Counts labeled "Tracked" reflect matters identified in our source set and are not official court statistics. We report what courts decided and did not decide; we do not predict outcomes.
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