Marcos Ramos et al. v. Branch Metrics, Inc.
Summary
A California trial court granted Branch Metrics' motion to stay a putative class action under Penal Code § 638.51 pending the Court of Appeal's decision in Variety Media, LLC v. Superior Court. The court continued consideration of Branch's demurrer and did not decide the statute's applicability to website-tracking technology.
Litigation Status
Procedural Posture
Putative class action alleging a single cause of action under CIPA (Cal. Penal Code § 638.51) for deployment of a 'Tracker' SDK/snippet that allegedly collected IP addresses and device identifiers. Defendant filed a demurrer and moved to stay proceedings (or discovery) pending resolution of a separate Court of Appeal case (Variety). The court granted the stay and continued the demurrer hearing; no class has been certified and no trial date set.
Reported Holding
The trial court granted Branch Metrics' motion to stay the action pending the decision in the Court of Appeal case Variety Media, LLC v. Superior Court (No. B350578), and continued (did not decide) Branch's demurrer to the complaint.
What the Court Decided
The court granted a stay of the entire action pending resolution of the referenced Court of Appeal proceeding (Variety), and continued the hearing on the defendant's demurrer. The court also granted judicial notice of certain court records related to the appellate proceedings for their existence and legal effect.
What the Court Did Not Decide
The court did not decide the defendant's demurrer or resolve whether Penal Code § 638.51 applies to internet/website tracking technologies, nor did it reach the merits of plaintiffs' allegations.
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
- Tracker (SDK and website code snippet)
- website/mobile app tracking / marketing analytics
- collection/transmission of IP addresses and device identifiers
Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: Branch Metrics, Inc..
Statutes Invoked
- California Penal Code section 638.51
Claims Asserted
- California Penal Code § 638.51 (CIPA - alleged use/installation of pen register/trap-and-trace device)
- Invasion of privacy (CIPA-related claim)
What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators
For operators using similar technologies, the recurring factual questions in matters like this one are what page URLs and query strings analytics tools share with third parties. Our scanner tests these behaviors empirically.
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
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.
Corrections: If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate, contact us via the contact page and we will review the underlying sources promptly.
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