Practice Areas
Privacy & Consumer Protection
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February 22, 2012
FCC Chief Pushes Cos. To Adopt Cybersecurity Standards
The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday companies should voluntarily adopt new cybersecurity standards designed to maintain consumer privacy while combating the growing threat of hackers and spammers, rather than relying on government regulations.
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February 22, 2012
State AGs Skeptical Of Google's New Privacy Policy
Three dozen attorneys general on Wednesday joined the chorus of government officials voicing concerns over Google Inc.'s new privacy policy, the same day a media reform group filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission aiming to halt the changes.
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February 22, 2012
Calif. AG, App Giants Unveil New Privacy Blueprint
California's attorney general announced an agreement Wednesday with Apple Inc., Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and three other mobile app platform operators that effectively establishes a nationwide, legally enforceable standard for app privacy policies.
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February 22, 2012
Payless Wraps Up Text Spam Class Action For $6M
A class of consumers asked a California federal judge Tuesday to sign off on an up to $6.25 million settlement to end a suit accusing Payless ShoeSource Inc. of violating federal law by sending unsolicited text messages.
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February 22, 2012
FDA Agrees To Give BPA Info To Enviros
An environmental group trying to ban bisphenol A from food packaging reached an agreement Friday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to obtain documents that could shed light on the chemical's health effects.
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February 22, 2012
CFPB Launches Checking Account Overdraft Fee Probe
The nation's consumer financial services watchdog on Wednesday launched a wide-ranging probe into how banks' checking account overdraft programs are affecting consumers, opening up a potential battle over one of the financial industry’s leading profit engines.
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February 22, 2012
Judge Won't Revive Suit Over Facebook's Data Sharing
A California federal judge refused Tuesday to revive a claim in a defunct class action accusing Facebook Inc. of improperly sharing consumers' personal information with advertisers, saying the claim's dismissal did not hinge on the nature of the plaintiffs' communications with the company.
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February 21, 2012
Borrowers, Quicken Spar Over RESPA Reach In High Court
A lawyer for a potential class of mortgage borrowers urged the Supreme Court in oral arguments Tuesday to find that the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act barred Quicken Loans Inc. and other lenders from collecting unearned fees, even if they weren’t shared with another party.
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February 21, 2012
High Court Won't Review Ill. Ruling On Telephone Act Suits
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act requires no stamp of approval from state legislatures before private actions can be brought in state courts.
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February 21, 2012
8 States Probe Abbott's Marketing Of Anti-Seizure Drug
Abbott Laboratories Inc., already facing a U.S. Department of Justice investigation over Depakote, disclosed Tuesday that the attorneys general of eight states are investigating whether the company's promotion of improper off-label uses for the anti-seizure drug Depakote violated state laws.
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February 21, 2012
Google Accused Of Secretly Tracking Apple Browser Users
Two proposed class actions were filed against Google Inc. on Friday in the wake of a controversy over the company's alleged efforts to bypass an Apple Inc. Web browser's privacy settings and secretly track users' Internet activity.
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February 21, 2012
Supreme Court Remands GPS Surveillance Rulings
The U.S. Supreme Court told the Seventh and Ninth circuits on Tuesday to reconsider findings that authorities acted constitutionally when they tracked a suspected criminal's vehicle using GPS technology, considering the high court's recent decision to the contrary in a similar case.
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February 21, 2012
5-Hour Energy Defense Costs Should Be Shared: Insurer
National Casualty Co. improperly denied coverage when the maker of 5-Hour Energy drinks was sued by a competitor for false advertising and trade libel, leaving Citizens Insurance Co. of America to pay for defense costs that should have been split, Citizens alleges in a complaint filed Friday.
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February 21, 2012
House Bill Would Cap Credit Card Interest Rates At 16%
A pair of Democratic lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill that would cap credit card interest rates at 16 percent, going farther than previous legislation on credit cards to limit expenses for consumers.
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February 17, 2012
Privacy, Piracy Concerns Prompt FTC Site Hacks
Several websites belonging to the Federal Trade Commission were shut down Friday following an attack by a hacker group, which said it was protesting the agency’s handling of a new Google privacy policy and the federal government’s support of a proposed global anti-counterfeiting agreement.
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February 17, 2012
CUNA Dodges Disability Insurance Class Claims
A Pennsylvania federal judge on Thursday tossed putative class claims in a suit alleging CUNA Mutual Insurance Society wrongfully denied or terminated credit disability benefits under its insurance policies, finding that collateral estoppel barred those claims.
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February 17, 2012
FTC Told Google Violated Buzz Settlement
Lawmakers and consumer groups on Friday urged the Federal Trade Commission to take immediate action against Google Inc. for allegedly violating consumers' choices and its prior Google Buzz settlement with the agency by placing third-party cookies that circumvented a privacy setting on Apple Inc.’s Safari Web browser.
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February 17, 2012
Ticketmaster Wants High Court Review Of Cert. Ruling
Ticketmaster LLC asked the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month to reverse a decision holding a class could be certified in a suit alleging Ticketmaster automatically shared more than 1 million customers' financial information with its sister company without their consent or knowledge.
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February 17, 2012
Citibank Improperly Taxed Airline Miles Perk: Suit
Two Citibank NA customers launched a putative class action against the bank on Tuesday, claiming it offers airline frequent flier miles to lure consumers into opening accounts with Citibank, but doesn't tell them that they will have to pay taxes on those miles.
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February 17, 2012
Sirius Dinged With Robocall Class Action
A California man lodged a putative class action against Sirius XM Radio Inc. on Wednesday, accusing the satellite radio provider of invading his privacy and violating federal law by making unsolicited marketing calls to his cellphone.
Expert Analysis
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Keeping Pace With EU Data Privacy Law Overhaul
The new EU privacy framework could impact so fundamentally the way companies conduct business and expose them to such large penalties that compliance may require comprehensive redesign of company privacy and data security policies across all operations — both inside and outside the EU, says Ieuan Jolly of Loeb & Loeb LLP.
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A Corporate-Friendly Breed Of Private Cloud Services
The growing number of private cloud services that offer the benefits of public cloud computing while providing protections that large corporations seek is being fueled by the goal of cloud service providers to expand their reach into the corporate market and the desire of traditional outsourcing providers to protect market share, say Kavi Grace and Paul Roy of Mayer Brown LLP.
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Case Study: Tyler V. Michaels Stores
The Massachusetts District Court ruling in Tyler v. Michaels Stores Inc. is significant because it indicates an increasing willingness by courts to broadly interpret statutory definitions of personal identification information even when the legislative intent behind the language differs, say Sharon Klein and Jeffrey Vagle of Pepper Hamilton LLP.
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Law School, Meet Litigation PR ...
The single most important thing law schools can do to manage their reputations in the face of litigation is apply the lessons learned from Wall Street during the recent financial crisis and strive for transparency in all communications. One need only look to Goldman Sachs’ woes or the struggles of Jon Corzine’s MF Global as examples of the catastrophic results of a campaign based on anything but complete honesty, says Spencer Baretz of Hellerman Baretz Communications.
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Facilitating The Federal Transition To The Cloud
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program's recently released concept of operations suggests that its new regime for cloud service authorization may slow down agencies’ anticipated timelines for transitioning to the cloud as the Joint Authorization Board and FedRAMP Project Management Office work to become fully operational, say attorneys with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.
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Why Competition Fails In The Online Advertising Market
People should care about Google Inc.'s dominance of the online advertising marketplace not because advertisers are facing monopoly pricing — although that is a policy concern — but because Google’s business model is based on systematically stripping away user privacy to maintain its dominance, says Nathan Newman of Tech-Progress.org.
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The Wide-Ranging Applications Of Calif. Anti-SLAPP Law
Although there are a number of subject matters to which California's anti-strategic lawsuits against public participation statute has been applied in the last few years, it is not always obvious whether a newly filed complaint can be targeted with such a motion, say Jeremy Rosen and Josephine Mason of Horvitz & Levy LLP.
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A Perfect Storm Of EU Data Law Changes
For any company deemed to be caught processing EU data, recent major developments in EU data protection law are combining into a "perfect storm" of increased risk, higher fines, more aggressive enforcers and less time to get one's house in order, says Rafi Azim-Khan of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.
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Info Gathering In The Google Age: Notes On The SCA
The focus on Google Inc.'s updated privacy policies and terms of service highlights the increasing relevance of a vestige of the pre-Internet Age that most computer users have never heard of: the Stored Communications Act, says Stephen Juris of Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason Anello & Bohrer PC.
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Revised Removal Statutes — Possibilities, Pitfalls: Part 2
The Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act of 2011 has brought about substantial clarification in the federal removal, jurisdiction and venue statutes. But the act still leaves substantial ambiguity in place when it comes to the scope of these statutes, say Colin Wrabley and Douglas Allen of Reed Smith LLP.