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Mealey's Data Privacy

May 24, 2022
Saudi Dissident’s Claims Over Hacked Twitter Account Dismissed As Time-Barred

SAN FRANCISCO — A political dissident from Saudi Arabia saw his privacy, contractual and unfair competition lawsuit against Twitter Inc. over the hacking and suspension of his account dismissed May 20 by a California federal judge, who found the plaintiff’s claims to be barred by the statute of limitations and the immunity provision of the Communications Decency Act (CDA).
May 20, 2022
Defendants In Bitcoin Theft, Data Breach Suit Seek Dismissal, Arbitration

SAN FRANCISCO — A retirement solutions company and a cryptocurrency exchange filed motions in California federal court on May 17 seeking, respectively, dismissal of and arbitration of a California man’s negligence claims over a February hacking incident that led to the theft of customers’ financial assets and personally identifiable information (PII).
May 20, 2022
Spyware Firm Asks High Court To Clarify Sovereign Immunity For Private Entities

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) does not clearly exclude sovereign immunity for private entities that, like it, act as agents for foreign states, an Israeli-owned spyware firm tells the U.S. Supreme Court in a May 16 reply brief supporting its petition for certiorari, asking the high court to offer guidance on this matter that it says has split the circuits.
May 19, 2022
9th Circuit Orders Briefs On State Secrets Privilege In Remanded Surveillance Suit

SAN FRANCISCO — Two months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) does not displace the state secrets privilege, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on May 10 directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a group of Muslim Americans who sued over domestic surveillance to submit briefs on questions about application of the privilege that the appeals court should address on remand.
May 13, 2022
NSA To High Court: State Secrets Privilege Barred Discovery In Surveillance Suit

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Security Agency (NSA) and other governmental parties tell the U.S. Supreme Court in a May 10 brief that two of its recent rulings confirmed that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals correctly found that the state secrets privilege barred a group of petitioners from obtaining classified surveillance documents that they sought to establish their standing to pursue constitutional and wiretap claims against the government, thus meriting denial of their petition for certiorari.
May 10, 2022
Ill. High Court Amicus Briefs Support Worker’s Arguments In Fingerprint Scan Case

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Three separate amicus curiae briefs filed April 19 in the Illinois Supreme Court present arguments supporting the position of a restaurant worker in a certified question from the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals regarding the accrual of claims under the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA) in a putative class complaint.
May 10, 2022
7 Classes Certified For Bellwether Claims In Marriott Data Breach Suit

GREENBELT, Md. — A Maryland federal judge on May 3 partly granted a class certification motion filed by the consumer plaintiffs in a class action over the massive data breach experienced by Marriott International Inc., combining and revising some of the plaintiffs’ proposed classes to certify seven state-specific classes related to existing bellwether claims.
May 09, 2022
Opt-Outs, Objections Argued As Court Mulls Final OK Of TikTok Privacy MDL

CHICAGO — In a May 4 reply brief, a group of multidistrict litigation plaintiffs ask an Illinois federal court to reject as meritless four objections to a $92 million settlement of privacy claims against TikTok Inc. and grant final approval.
May 06, 2022
U.S., Railway Battle Over Privacy In Libby, Mont., Asbestos-Screening Lawsuit

MISSOULA, Mont. — The United States on April 21 told a judge that federal law protects private Medicare and Social Security information and argued that the information would become relevant to a railway’s case against a Libby, Mont., asbestos screening company only in the event that the court awarded damages. But in an April 28 reply in support of its second motion to compel, the railway said any privacy issues can be remedied by subjecting the relevant evidence to an existing protective order.
May 06, 2022
WhatsApp To High Court: No Sovereign Immunity For Private Foreign Entities

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) extends sovereign immunity to foreign-state-owned entities, not private entities, WhatsApp Inc. tells the U.S. Supreme Court in a May 3 brief opposing an Israeli spyware firm’s petition of certiorari appealing the denial of its motion to quash computer fraud claims brought against it by WhatsApp.
April 29, 2022
Judge: Phone Company’s Failure To Stop $466K Crypto Hack Didn’t Violate UCL

SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge on April 27 dismissed in part a man’s lawsuit accusing a cellular service provider of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and federal statutes by failing to protect his phone’s private data from hackers who used his data to access and steal his cryptocurrency holdings worth $466,000.
April 28, 2022
Panel Affirms City’s Contingency Fees With Law Firms For UCL Suit Over Data Leak

SAN DIEGO — A California appellate panel on April 26 affirmed San Diego’s contingency fee arrangement with three private law firms hired for a suit against a data analytics company accused of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by allegedly allowing a Vietnamese hacker access to the personal information of more than 400,000 California residents, finding that the arrangement doesn’t violate standards of neutrality or the UCL.
April 28, 2022
Plaintiffs Seek Final Approval Of $92 Million TikTok App Privacy Class Action

CHICAGO — Six months after an Illinois federal judge preliminarily approved an agreement that would settle a privacy multidistrict litigation accusing TikTok Inc. of collecting user data without permission, the plaintiffs on March 31 moved for final approval, calling the settlement’s $92 million settlement fund and injunctive relief “an excellent result.”
April 26, 2022
Alleged Misstatements In Marriott Data Breach Investor Suit Properly Dismissed

RICHMOND, Va. — A federal district court did not err in dismissing investor claims against hotelier Marriott International Inc. and certain of its executive officers and members of its audit committee stemming from a major breach of sensitive guest data by hackers because the lead plaintiff in the action failed to sufficiently plead any actionable misstatements or omissions in making its federal securities law claims, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled April 21 in affirming.
April 25, 2022
High Court Won’t Consider 4th Amendment Questions Over Cellular Data Acquisition

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Questions about whether the collection of cell site location information (CSLI) by law enforcement personnel violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution will go unheard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which on April 25 denied a petition for certiorari by a convicted armed robber who was placed at the scene of several crimes by the use of such data.
April 25, 2022
Judge Approves $85M Settlement Of Zoom Privacy Class Action

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Six months after granting preliminary approval to an $85 million settlement of privacy and unfair competition claims against Zoom Video Communications Inc., a California federal judge on April 21 granted final approval, concluding that it “provides good value” to the plaintiffs while being fair to the defendant.
April 22, 2022
Data-Aggregator Can’t Dismiss Putative Class UCL And Privacy Claims, Judge Rules

SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge on April 19 denied a motion by a personal information data-aggregator website to dismiss putative class action claims against it including for violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) as well as Ohio and Indiana privacy laws, finding that the website cannot claim immunity under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) or free-speech protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Const. amend. I.
April 22, 2022
Consumer Class Gets Final OK For $9 Million Settlement Of Wawa Data Breach Suit

PHILADELPHIA — Nine months after preliminarily approving a settlement between a class of consumer plaintiffs and Wawa Inc. in a lawsuit over a 2019 data breach the convenience store chain experienced, a Pennsylvania federal judge on April 20 granted the plaintiffs’ motion for final approval of the $9 million settlement that provides for distribution of Wawa gift cards and cash payments to affected customers.
April 18, 2022
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenge To Santa Fe’s Donor Data Reporting Ordinance

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A nonprofit organization’s challenge under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution of a Santa Fe, N.M., ordinance requiring the reporting of political donors’ personal information in certain instances will go unheard by the U.S. Supreme Court, as the organization’s petition for certiorari asserting the chilling of speech was denied April 18.
April 15, 2022
Facebook’s Attorney Denies Discovery Misconduct, Touts Spotless Sanctions Record

SAN FRANCISCO — The day after Facebook Inc. filed its opposition to a sanctions motion brought by the plaintiffs in the Cambridge Analytica data-sharing class action, the company’s lead attorney, who is also named in the motion, filed a declaration in California federal court on April 12, attesting to a clean sanctions record in his professional career and defending the discovery conduct of Facebook and his firm in the litigation.
April 13, 2022
Railway: Privacy Act No Bar To Discovery In Asbestos Screening Lawsuit

MISSOULA, Mont. — A railroad embroiled in a False Claims Act (FCA) suit involving diagnosis of asbestos diseases filed a second motion to compel on April 8, seeking a federal court in Montana’s help in securing the release of Social Security and tax records from the federal government.
April 06, 2022
E-Commerce Platform Firm Sued Over Hack Of Cryptocurrency Users’ Info

WILMINGTON, Del. — E-commerce platform operator Shopify Inc. and its data processing vendor were hit with a putative class complaint in Delaware federal court on April 1, with cryptocurrency users claiming that the defendants’ negligence led to a data breach that exposed the personally identifiable information (PII) of the clients of a cryptocurrency wallet company.
April 05, 2022
Judge Remands Voter Registration Data Sales Class Action To State Court

SAN DIEGO — A California federal judge on March 17 granted a woman’s motion to remand to state court her putative class action accusing two tech companies of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by conspiring to illegally sell California voter registration data, finding that the local controversy exception to the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) applies.
April 05, 2022
Judge Dismisses UCL Claim From Tortured Chinese Activist’s Hacked Emails Lawsuit

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on March 31 dismissed with prejudice a claim for violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) brought by a Chinese pro-democracy activist against two Yahoo! Inc. successor entities and two former Yahoo executives, which the activist claimed profited by sharing his emails with Chinese officials and causing his imprisonment and the destruction of his assets, and dismissed with leave to amend his Alien Torts Statute (ATS) claim for torture.
April 04, 2022
Preliminary OK Given To $90 Million Settlement Of Meta Internet Tracking Suit

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A decade-old consolidated privacy class action against Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook Inc.) moved one step closer to settlement on March 31 when a California federal judge granted preliminary approval to a $90 million settlement of claims related to the social network operator’s tracking of users’ internet activities.