Haviland v. Rokt Inc.

Published by Crandall Consulting · Informational litigation intelligence · Last substantive update: September 8, 2026

Docket / citation: 2:26-cv-00582

Summary

A federal district court (E.D. Cal.) granted Rokt's motion to stay a putative CIPA class action alleging that website-installed DBSDKs transmitted visitors' browsing data in violation of Cal. Penal Code § 638.51. The court found the stay appropriate because an imminent California Court of Appeals decision in Variety Media likely will resolve the key statutory question and simplify the case.

Litigation Status

Status, direction, and weight describe how tracked public sources characterize this matter as of our last review — they are informational classifications, not legal assessments.

Procedural Posture

Plaintiff filed a putative class action alleging Rokt installed Data Broker SDKs that transmit visitors' browsing data in violation of Cal. Penal Code § 638.51. Defendant moved to stay proceedings pending the California Court of Appeals' decision in Variety Media. The court granted the stay before discovery commenced and ordered the parties to file a joint status report within seven days of the appellate decision.

Reported Holding

The court granted Defendant's motion to stay the proceedings pending the California Court of Appeals' decision in Variety Media, finding that the appellate decision is likely to resolve whether Cal. Penal Code § 638.51 applies to the internet tracking software at issue and that the Landis factors favor a limited stay.

What the Court Decided

The District Court (E.D. Cal.) granted Rokt's motion to stay the case pending a California Court of Appeals decision in Variety Media, concluding that an appellate ruling would likely simplify the central legal question—whether § 638.51 applies to DBSDKs/website browser-tracking software—and that the stay would not unfairly prejudice the parties.

What the Court Did Not Decide

The court did not decide whether Cal. Penal Code § 638.51 applies to internet tracking software (the merits of the plaintiff's statutory claim were not adjudicated).

Significance

Generally viewed as defense-favorable. 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

• Data Broker Software Development Kits (DBSDKs)
• website/browser tracking

Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: Rokt US Corp., Data brokers (unnamed).

Statutes Invoked

• Cal. Penal Code § 638.51

Claims Asserted

Claims identified in tracked public sources; pleadings may include additional or amended claims.

• Cal. Penal Code § 638.51 (CIPA: trap and trace device)

What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators

Because this matter is pending, anything reported here is procedural — allegations and interim rulings, not final determinations.

Detection of a similar technology on a website is an informational risk indicator, not a legal conclusion, and nothing in this section is legal advice.

Related Intelligence

Sources

• Haviland v. Rokt Inc., 2:26-cv-00582 (document) — Midpage · Tier B (Authoritative secondary) · 2026-08-07

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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