The proliferation of privacy-related law suits filed against a wide range of companies related to website tracking/analytics will continue in 2023, joining robocall and biometric privacy disputes.
Join Kelley Drye Privacy Litigation partners Lauri Mazzuchetti and Whitney Smith, and Privacy & Information Security chair Alysa Hutnik for a webinar on Wednesday, February 15 at
The replay for our April 28, 2022 Consumer Privacy Litigation Update webinar is available here.
The increasing number of states enacting privacy laws means more privacy litigation. On this webinar, partners Lauri Mazzuchetti and Becca Wahlquist highlighted emerging trends across the docket of privacy litigation cases, provided an update on key cases involving consumer
The Jacksonville Jaguars didn’t have the best season. In addition to finishing last in the AFC South, drama off the field led to fans staging a “clown out,” by wearing rainbow wigs and painted faces to season finale. Faced with the prospect of being associated with the clown out, Roofclaim.com – one of the team’s
Over the course of about a week, the CPSC, an agency that rarely litigates, flexed its litigation muscles not once, but twice, recently filing complaints against Amazon and Thyssenkrupp Access Corp., seeking to force both companies to conduct recalls. Both are administrative complaints.
Fulfilled by Amazon
The CPSC voted 3-1 to file its complaint against
Last week, the Seventh Circuit reminded advertisers of the narrowing availability of insurance coverage for Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) claims. In Mesa Laboratories v. Federal Insurance Co., the court rejected a fax marketer’s bid to make its insurer pay for its defense and settlement of an underlying unsolicited fax lawsuit. This decision underscores the insurance industry’s recent trend of limiting TCPA coverage under general policy forms and requiring policyholders to seek out and purchase specific coverage for those types of claims.
At one time, insurance policies did not say whether they provided coverage for claims brought under the TCPA. When the statute was passed in 1991, many policyholders were able to secure coverage for TCPA claims under the “personal and advertising injury” portions of their general liability insurance policies, which typically cover any “oral or written publication that violates a person’s right to privacy.” With the explosion of TCPA lawsuits in recent years, however, insurers have looked to reduce their own exposure by adding exclusions to their policies that expressly bar coverage for TCPA claims. At the same time, many carriers have started offering affirmative coverage for TCPA liability. Policyholders usually must pay extra for this, however, and the coverage often comes with reduced sublimits of liability or other restrictions on coverage.
But even when a policy has an express TCPA exclusion, an insurer still might have to defend its insured in a lawsuit that asserts TCPA claims because of a general principle of insurance law recognized by courts around the country: if a lawsuit asserts multiple claims against an insured, and at least one of those claims is covered by the policy, the insurer must defend the entire lawsuit – even if the other claims are expressly excluded from coverage. Thus, an insurer whose policy excludes TCPA claims might have to defend a TCPA lawsuit if the plaintiff also includes a false advertising or defamation claim, both of which are expressly covered.
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Reminds Insurance Policyholders to Shop Carefully for TCPA Coverage
Over the last few months, a wave of consumers have filed putative class action complaints against a long list of consumer-facing website owners/operators and their software providers alleging invasion of privacy rights under statutes focused on wiretapping and eavesdropping.
Our team has represented both website and software defendants in these cases. However, this post is not intended to reflect on any specific claim, website, or software. Rather, our goal is to provide an introduction to the general nature of the consumer claims and current landscape of these litigations.
This post summarizes (1) the “session replay” technology at issue in these claims; (2) arguments presented by the Complaints; (3) an overview of common defenses; and (4) where things stand. With that context, we then provide our list of practical considerations for the use of session replay software.
What is “Session Replay” Software?
A significant branch of the Software-as-a-Service (Saas) industry has arisen to support website owners/operators in effectively maintaining and leveraging their consumer-facing websites. These software products are generally scripts placed in the JavaScript of a given website to capture specific information related to a consumer’s interactions with a given page. The software can capture consumer’s keystrokes and mouse movements to provide information on everything from broken links or error messages to support IT teams, create heat maps showing website usage, and/or capture consumer information for validating consent to be contacted or agreement to receive products and services.
Despite how these products are often described, the software does not actually record the consumer’s session in the way that a security camera in a brick-and-mortar store would capture a consumer’s movements. Rather it captures the consumer’s interactions with the website at regular intervals and allows those movements and data points to be laid over an existing image of the website so that owners/operators can review a recreation (or dramatization) of an individual consumer’s experience.
Continue Reading Privacy Litigation Trend: The Latest on Session Replay Lawsuits, and Practical Considerations for Risk Mitigation
As we move deeper into the second year of CCPA litigation, the substantive issues continue to develop and we remain focused on the patterns and implications of recent filings and rulings. In this post, we highlight notable developments in three cases that occurred in the first quarter of 2021. These cases raise significant issues
Welcome to our selected regulatory and litigation highlights impacting the food and beverage industry in March 2021. The food court saw its own brand of March Madness with disputes over food delivery fees kicking off this month’s update.
Litigation Developments
Hidden Delivery Fees
A number of suits were filed in March regarding undisclosed delivery fees.
Earlier this week, Judge Cynthia Bashant of the Southern District of California granted a plaintiff’s second bite at the apple (or rather biscuit) to certify a class of purchasers of belVita breakfast biscuits in McMorrow v. Mondelez International, Inc. The plaintiff alleged that Mondelez falsely labeled its belVita biscuits as providing “NUTRITIOUS SUSTAINED ENERGY;” “NUTRITIOUS
Welcome to our monthly digest of litigation and regulatory highlights impacting the food and beverage industry. February saw another win for industry on the vanilla front, a preemption win in California state court, and FDA continuing with COVID-19-related warning letters and foreign supplier verification enforcement. Let’s take a look….
Litigation
Industry scored another win on
