The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday, in Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma, that zip codes are "personal identification information" for purposes of California's Song-Beverly Credit Card Act, California Civil Code section 1747.08. Really.
InfoLawGroup recently discovered a new data breach case, one of the first that we are aware of in the United States, that dives deep into the issue of whether a common law duty exists to safeguard personal information. In Cooney, et. al v. Chicago Public Schools, et. al¸ an Illinois appellate court actually rendered a decision holding that no such duty exists under Illinois law. In this blogpost we take a closer look at the court's rationale for dismissing the plaintiffs' negligence claim, as well as the other interesting holdings of the court.
Scott Blackmer provides a "discovery" checklist for global enterprises handling personal data from multiple jurisdictions, as well as advice on a global approach to privacy compliance and risk management.
The Maine Supreme Court has rendered its opinion on the "damages" issue in the Hannaford Bros. consumer security breach lawsuit. Again, the plaintiffs have been unable to establish that they suffered any harm as a result of the Hannaford security breach. Specifically, the Court ruled that "time and effort" alone spent to avoid or remediate reasonably foreseeable harm do not constitute "a cognizable injury for which damages may be recovered." In this blogpost we take a closer look at the Court's rationale.
What does workplace privacy have to do with the cloud? Everything. On Tuesday, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its opinion in Stengart v. LovingCare Agency, Inc., --- A.2d ----, 2010 WL 1189458 (N.J. March 30, 2010), and came out on the side of protecting employee privacy and the attorney-client privilege in personal Yahoo! webmail (a cloud service) even though the employee used a company computer. While everyone has been busy writing about the implications of LovingCare for company policies governing employee expectations of privacy (and for good reason), few have stopped to note that LovingCare is a cloud case. LovingCare is one of only a few published opinions addressing the difficult issues surrounding employee use of webmail and other cloud services on company computers where the attorney-client privilege is at stake, and the impact of the LovingCare decision will undoubtedly be felt for years to come by nearly every employer across the country, both in crafting policies for employee use of company computer systems and in conducting discovery in nearly every employment-related litigation. The machine may be the employer's, but, in the post-LovingCare world, the data may be the employee's - at least where the cloud and the attorney-client privilege are involved. You can read my detailed case analysis in this post.