On April 9, 2019, an appellate court in Illinois held in Liu v. Four Seasons Hotel, Ltd.[1] that an employee’s allegations of violations of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA” or the “Act”) do not constitute allegations of “a wage or hour violation,” even where collection of biometric data is being used to monitor hours worked.  Coming on the heels of the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision in Rosenbach v. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation…

On March 20, 2019, in Frank v. Gaos, the Supreme Court remanded a case challenging Google’s practice of disclosing users’ search terms to third parties, directing the lower courts to address whether class plaintiffs had Article III standing to bring the privacy action in light of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016).[1]  Frank v. Gaos was originally notable because it had been resolved by a cy pres-only class action settlement,…

On December 6, 2018, in Williams-Diggins v. Mercy Health, an Ohio district court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss a putative class action related to a cybersecurity vulnerability in the Ohio-based medical provider’s computer systems that allegedly left patient health information publicly accessible online for years.  United States District Judge Jeffrey Helmick dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction (among other reasons), finding that the plaintiff’s theories of harm—overpayment and risk of future exposure or…

On November 28, 2018, Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California denied the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s motion for a preliminary injunction against Blockvest, LLC and Reginald Ringgold in connection with Defendants’ initial coin offering (“ICO”).  In doing so, the court found disputed issues of fact existed regarding whether the so-called “BLV” tokens constituted “securities” under the test set out in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co.…

On November 6-8, 2018, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) hosted a public hearing on “Privacy, Big Data, and Competition.”  The event was part of a series of public hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century, modeled after the agency’s 1995 “Pitofsky Hearings.”  The series solicits input from a wide variety of private and public sector stakeholders and academics to inform and guide the FTC’s regulatory and enforcement efforts in light…

On November 2, the SEC’s Enforcement Division released its annual report detailing the facts and figures of its enforcement efforts in fiscal year 2018.  At first blush, this year’s report looks strikingly similar to those from recent years, as the headline numbers in most categories are nearly indistinguishable from 2015, 2016, and 2017.  This consistency may be surprising given that 2018 is the first such report reflecting exclusively the enforcement priorities of the Commission since…

On the heels of the European Union’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and public outcry over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, on June 28, 2018, California enacted the most comprehensive data privacy law to date in the United States. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (the “CCPA”) was hastily passed by the California legislature to secure the withdrawal of an even more far-reaching measure that had qualified for the November ballot. Legislative…