Category: Litigation

Is there standing to bring a lawsuit when an employee’s personal information is mistakenly circulated to all employees at the company?  A recent decision addressed exactly this question. In McMorris v. Carlos Lopez & Assocs., LLC, No. 19-4310, 2021 WL 1603808 (2d Cir. Apr. 26, 2021), the Second Circuit affirmed the district court in finding that the harm plaintiffs alleged (an increased risk of identity theft) was too speculative and remote to satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III standing.  However, the court did not completely shut the door on this theory of harm, holding that an “increased risk” of identity theft could, under certain circumstances, qualify as an injury-in-fact for purposes of Article III standing. In doing so, the Second Circuit aligned with a number of its sister circuits which had previously recognized the potential validity of this approach.

The question of standing has proven to be a tricky one in data breach litigation.  (See our prior coverage here and here).  Last week a federal district court in Maryland rejected a proposed class action brought by Marriott guests related to a data breach suffered by the hotel chain in early 2020, finding that the plaintiffs did not have Article III standing because they could not trace any alleged injury to particular actions or inactions by Marriott.  This decision is an important reminder that the fact of a breach is not itself sufficient to confer standing, even where personal data is improperly accessed. In other words, even though a company that had your data suffered a data breach, you may not have been injured by its actions.

Last week, a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia held that a breach report prepared by Mandiant (a digital forensics investigator, among other things) in response to the Capital One data breach was not protected by the attorney work product doctrine. 

Over the past month, many have discovered video chat and conferencing apps such as Zoom and Houseparty, using them for both business and to keep connected to friends and family during this period of global social distancing. Increased usage of these apps has also resulted in close scrutiny of their privacy practices by the public and government authorities. Indeed, Zoom has been hit with eight class actions that were recently consolidated, while separate plaintiffs sued the owners of Houseparty. A core allegation among those suits is that, without notice or consent, these apps provided user data to third parties (e.g., Facebook). Both the Houseparty complaint and a majority of the Zoom complaints allege violations of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), making these cases among the first with the potential to test the contours of the nascent but expansive privacy law. If the CCPA claims in these suits survive, it could signal the beginning of a substantial increase in class actions claiming CCPA violations.

This past week, The Home Depot, Inc. became the latest business hit with a class action lawsuit for their use of facial recognition security cameras allegedly in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.  If successful, Home Depot faces statutory damages of up to $5,000 for each time a shopper’s information was collected in violation of BIPA.

Among other things, 2018 was the year of the shareholder data breach stock-drop lawsuit. As we’ve previously reported, it was the year that shareholders began routinely suing companies after an announcement of a data breach, seeking damages for a hit to the company’s stock price. 

A federal appeals court is giving Google and the Justice Department more time to work out their differences in a standoff over whether the tech giant must hand over customer emails stored outside of the United States.

It’s become almost routine. A public company suffers a data breach at the hands of hackers, its stock price slides and the securities fraud class action lawsuits pile on.

As we recently reported, it’s a new trend in securities fraud class actions. Shareholders claim that public companies have improperly inflated their stock value either by failing to timely disclose data security incidents or latent vulnerabilities that rendered the company’s systems susceptible to a cyberattack.

In one of the first major tests of the Illinois biometric data privacy law, Facebook is headed to trial this summer over allegations that the social media giant unlawfully collects user data with its photo tagging function. Last week, U.S. District Judge James Donato denied cross motions for summary judgment in a class action pending in Northern California, noting the “multitude of fact disputes in the case.”

This morning, the long-running dispute between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. government regarding data stored abroad was resolved by the United States Supreme Court. As we’ve previously discussed, the case posed the question: must U.S. companies comply with warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) that demand data stored in a foreign country? Today, the Supreme Court concluded that newly enacted legislation had effectively ended the case, making the Court’s involvement unnecessary.

We’ve written several times about the landmark dispute between the U.S. government and Microsoft Corp. over access to a customer’s emails stored in Ireland. Now, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on the government’s appeal, the Justice Department has asked the Court to remand the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions to dismiss it as moot.

Last week, a federal district judge in California shot down Facebook, Inc.’s second attempt to dismiss a putative class action alleging that its facial recognition software violates the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA). The court found that plaintiffs had standing to proceed under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robbins because the alleged BIPA violation was sufficient to give rise to a “concrete injury” for purposes of bringing suit.

On Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee grilled Uber’s Chief Information Security Officer, John Flynn, over a 2016 data breach that affected nearly 57 million drivers and riders. At the hearing, Uber faced backlash from lawmakers for its “morally wrong and legally reprehensible” conduct that “violated not only the law but the norm of what should be expected.”

A federal judge in New York has reinstated claims brought against a healthcare provider by customers whose personal information was exposed in the 2015 data breach of Excellus BlueCross Blue Shield.  The breach affected the information of as many as 10.5 million individuals.

The fight over the privacy of electronic communications and the government’s ability to reach emails stored abroad in criminal investigations has finally moved to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A recent federal appellate ruling delivered a significant blow to invasion of privacy claims based on facial recognition technology used to scan users’ faces that are then put on their personalized players “in-game,” allowing them to play side-by-side with basketball stars in a popular video game.

A federal judge in California has agreed to hold Google in contempt for not following his order to turn over data stored overseas.  The order is largely symbolic, however, since a contempt order is required for Google to appeal the ruling.

The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (“CFAA”) has generated controversy and disagreement among courts and commentators regarding the scope of its application.  The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which provides for both criminal and civil penalties, prohibits accessing a computer or protected computer “without authorization” or in a manner “exceeding authorized access.”  Courts are divided as to the meaning of these phrases, yet the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined the opportunity to resolve the circuit split that has developed, leaving the exact scope of this important statute in question.

Richard F. Smith – who presided over Equifax Inc. as CEO during one of the largest data breaches in a generation – will testify before two congressional committees next week. 

Yesterday, a District Court in Northern California weighed in on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) authority to protect consumers from “unfair” and “deceptive” data security practices.  The decision, which granted in part and denied in part the defendant’s motion to dismiss, is a mixed bag for the Commission.

Yesterday, New York’s top financial regulator asked state-chartered banks and insurers to take immediate precautions to protect consumers and the financial markets “in light of the cybersecurity attack” at Equifax Inc.

The drumbeat of bad news continues for credit monitoring agency Equifax Inc., after its disclosure on September 7^th of a massive data breach – compromising Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other personally identifiable information – that might affect as many as 143 million Americans.

Since the massive data breach at Equifax Inc. was disclosed late Thursday (see our blog here), the news has only gotten worse for the Atlanta-based credit monitoring agency. 

As we head into the new week, here’s a quick summary of major data security developments from around the country.

Another federal judge has rejected the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), and has ordered Google to hand over customer email traffic—wherever located—to U.S. law enforcement.  More than a year ago, the Second Circuit held that Microsoft Corp. was not required to produce customer emails stored on foreign servers in response to an SCA warrant.  Since then, the Second Circuit’s ruling has been rejected by three different federal courts around the country.