- “Is Arbitration Awful? The New York Times Thinks So.” [New Jersey Civil Justice Institute, earlier here and here] And speaking of that paper, I’m going to miss Joe Nocera’s incisive coverage of the litigation business in his column, often linked here; he’s off to other duties at the Times [Politico/New York]
- Yet more from the Times, longread on litigation investing and champerty: “Should You Be Allowed To Invest In a Lawsuit?”
- Mikal Watts through the years: “It was part of my strategy to affect the stock price, which I was very successful at.” [Madison County Record, more]
- “No negligence liability for injuries by fellow players in contact sport” [Eugene Volokh, martial arts, Colorado Court of Appeals]
- Defense lawyer claims adversary had advance word about jury deliberations, grabbed $25 million settlement [Chicago Law Bulletin]
- Is data privacy the next source of mass lawsuits? [Chamber Institute for Legal Reform]
- Funds needlessly drained: “Asbestos reforms needed to protect first responders and veterans” [Rep. Blake Farenthold, The Hill]
Posts Tagged ‘privacy’
“Watching the Watchmen: Best Practices for Police Body Cameras”
“Body cameras undoubtedly gather valuable evidence of police misconduct, and although research on the effects of body cameras is comparatively limited there are good reasons to believe that they can improve police behavior. However, without the right policies in place the use of police body cameras could result in citizens’ privacy being needlessly violated.” Storage and release policies for video footage need to be carefully considered ahead of time as well. [Matthew Feeney, Cato]
LinkedIn class action settlement
On Oct. 2 “millions of LinkedIn users received an email titled ‘LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION.’ The email told recipients about a proposed class action settlement in Perkins v. LinkedIn, involving ‘LinkedIn’s alleged improper use of a service called “Add Connections” to grow its member base.’ …Communicating with a large class of millions of victims is never easy, but this particular notification was handled particularly poorly. Let me highlight six problems with the notification….If the sender’s goal is to reduce the number of people who open the email, late Friday afternoon is a fine choice.” [Eric Goldman/Forbes] More: Coyote (“You Want to Know Why the Legal System is Broken?”)
Claim: Twitter’s use of URL shorteners in direct messages is privacy violation
A would-be class action from Edelson PC “aims to represent two classes — every American on Twitter who has ever received a direct message and every American on Twitter who has ever sent a direct message.” The claim is that Twitter’s use of URL shorteners for links sent within direct messages (DMs) violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California privacy law because the service “reads” (if only by algorithm) communications that it promised were confidential. “The claimed damages are as high as $100 per day for each Twitter user whose privacy was violated.” [Hollywood Reporter] Overlawyered readers have met the Chicago-based Edelson class-action firm on previous occasions.
At least if you’re not the feds’ own Office of Personnel Management
“Can The FTC Sue You For Lax CyberSecurity? (Spoilers: Yes)” [Keith Lee/Above the Law, earlier on epic OPM hack]
CCP v. Harris: “The Right To Anonymous Speech and Association”
The Supreme Court should step in to stop California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s dragnet for nonprofit donors [Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer, Cato]
“Abolish cash? You’d be losing a crucial part of free society”
Matthew Lynn at the Telegraph notes
a growing movement among academics and now governments to gradually ban the use of cash completely. It is inefficient, oils the underground economy, and makes it harder for central banks to manage the economy, or so runs the argument.
But while a “cashless economy would be far easier to both tax and control” for the authorities, it would afford to the governed both less convenience and less freedom:
A simpler and more efficient “payment technology” has never been invented. No matter how smart our mobiles get, or how much data can be loaded on to a debit card, a banknote is an incredibly efficient way to handle small transactions. It is costless, immediate, flexible, no one ever needs a password, it can’t be hacked, and the system doesn’t ever crash.
More importantly, cash is about freedom. There are surely limits to the control over society we wish to hand over to governments and central banks? You don’t need to be a fully paid-up libertarian to question whether, in a world where we already worry about the amount of data that Facebook and Google can gather about us, we really want the banks and the state to know every single detail of what we are spending our money on and where. It is easy to surrender that freedom – but it will be a lot harder to get back.
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- New York Times suggests Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinions borrow too much language from briefs and lower courts. Orin Kerr on why that’s unfair;
- Prosecutors have too much leeway to request freeze on defendant’s assets pending trial [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Certiorari petition arising from Newman/Chiasson prosecution: “Obama Administration Gambles On Supreme Court Review Of Insider-Trading Case” [Daniel Fisher]
- “Another Chance To Clean Up ‘Trial by Formula’ Class Actions” [Andrew Grossman/Cato, SCOTUSBlog on Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo]
- “Bench Memos” to the barricades: National Review builds case for “resistance” to Supreme Court decisions” [my two cents at Cato on rhetoric likening Obergefell to Dred Scott]
- Media firms including Time, Meredith, Advance, NPR jump into Spokeo case before high court, warn of Fair Credit Reporting Act litigation “quagmire” [Media Post]
- After a tainted-food episode, managers convicted without a showing of mens rea? Egg case deserves a closer look [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
“Lawyers smelling blood in wake of Ashley Madison hack”
Anonymous hackers having exposed customer data from a much-hyped adultery website, “class-action attorneys are currently following the Ashley Madison blood trail in hopes of winning a monetary payday for themselves and the site’s millions of members. In the last week, the Rosen Law Firm of New York began an outright solicitation for Ashley Madison users to join a prospective privacy and consumer fraud suit against the Ashley Madison site.” [David Kravets, ArsTechnica]
“Quit snooping into trash, city of Seattle told in privacy lawsuit”
A group of privacy advocates is suing the city of Seattle, arguing that having garbage collectors look through people’s trash — to make sure food scraps aren’t going into the garbage — “violates privacy rights on a massive scale.”
“A person has a legitimate expectation that the contents of his or her garbage cans will remain private and free from government inspection,” argues the lawsuit filed [last] Thursday in King County Superior Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation.
More: Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Earlier on the city’s ban on food waste in trash, and severe limits on other types of material, here.