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Typically groups of individuals sue a company or companies for the same injury or damage, e.g., data breaches, product liability, environmental contamination, price fixing, etc.

Drone Law with Kathryn Rattigan

August 30th, 2021|Categories: Class Actions, ELP, Emerging Litigation & Risk, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Drone Law with Kathryn Rattigan Joining me to discuss this emerging area of law is Kathryn M. Rattigan, a member of the Business Litigation Group, the Data Privacy + Cybersecurity Team, and the Drone Compliance Team in the Rhode Island office of Robinson Cole.  Kathryn advises clients on these matters with expertise in the relevant Federal Aviation Administration regulations. She and her colleagues also advise clients on employee and subcontractor contracts, insurance policies, privacy regulations, state and local laws, and best practices as recommended by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.  She handles product defect, personal injury, and property damage litigation, too.  Kathryn is a frequent contributor to the excellent Robinson Cole Data Privacy + Cybersecurity Insider blog.  She holds a J.D. from the Roger Williams University School of Law and a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Stonehill College. This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, a collaborative project between HB Litigation Conferences and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, Docket Alarm and, most recently, Judicata. If you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects, or want to tell me how insightful and informative Kathryn is, please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com. This podcast is based on an article she wrote for the Journal. Just to clarify. Kathryn does own a drone, but not [...]

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Cannabis Industry Competition Law with Ausra Deluard and Jennifer Oliver

July 4th, 2021|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, ELP, News|Tags: , , , , |

Attorneys Ausra Deluard and Jennifer Oliver on Cannabis Industry Competition Law What can legitimate cannabis companies do to level the playing field, not only against others who walk the straight and narrow, but dealers still thriving on the black market? It was my pleasure to interview Ausra Deluard and Jennifer Oliver for what was an informative and even surprising podcast. It's based on their article -- Clearing the Haze: State Laws and Private Plaintiffs Critical to Preserve Competition in Cannabis -- which will be featured in the inaugural issue of the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, which will release in January 2021. Ausra, who is an attorney with the global law firm Dentons LLP, has spent more than a decade advising clients in a range of antitrust matters including merger investigations, competitor collaborations, and pricing and distribution policies. She works closely with cannabis clients to help them navigate the rapidly evolving cannabis laws and regulations throughout the U.S. Jennifer is a partner at national antitrust boutique MoginRubin LLP, where she litigates and advises clients on competition issues.  Her work includes representing classes of plaintiffs in class actions, risk mitigation and regulatory advice in mergers and acquisitions, and other complex business litigation. Check out the MoginRubin Blog. The Journal is a collaborative project between [...]

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Three Urgent Consumer Class Action Topics with Paul Bland of Public Justice

June 22nd, 2021|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, ELP, HB Risk Notes, News|Tags: , , , , |

Three Urgent Consumer Class Action Topics with Paul Bland of Public Justice To discuss these issues, it was my pleasure to interview F. Paul Bland, Jr., Executive Director of Public Justice, an organization that pursues "high impact lawsuits to combat social and economic injustice, protect the Earth’s sustainability, and challenge predatory corporate conduct and government abuses." Paul has argued and won more than 40 cases that led to reported decisions for consumers, employees or whistleblowers, including one victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, and has won one or more cases in six of the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the high courts of 10 different states. This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, a collaborative project between HB and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, Docket Alarm and, most recently, Judicata. If you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects, or want to tell me how insightful and informative Paul is, please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com. We hope you enjoy the interview, and how I slipped in mention of Schrödinger's cat which, as everyone knows (that's sarcasm and self-deprecation), is a thought experiment that illustrates an apparent paradox of quantum superposition. Class actions can be an invaluable tool when consumers need to level the playing field in disputes with [...]

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Myriah Jaworski on Arbitration as Defense Against Data Breach Class Actions

March 19th, 2021|Categories: Class Actions, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, Journal, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , , , |

Myriah Jaworski on Individual Arbitration as a Defense Strategy Against Data Breach Class Actions Abstract Data privacy class actions are proliferating. Defendant companies may find an effective defense strategy is moving to compel individual arbitration. Not all contracts have the appropriate language, however, and, even if they do, they may not succeed. This article, which will appear in the forthcoming issue of the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, discusses U.S. privacy litigation and case law on compelling arbitration of class claims in the privacy law context, with recommendations for businesses to improve their chances of securing court orders that enforce arbitration language in their agreements. Author Myriah V. Jaworski, Esq. (mjaworski@beckage.com), is a member with the Beckage, a law firm specializing in technology, data security and privacy. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional, United States (CIPP/US) and Certified Information Privacy Professional, Europe (CIPP/E). She leads Beckage’s Privacy Litigation Practice Group where she represents clients in data breach actions, technology vendor disputes, and the defense of consumer class actions and related regulatory investigations. Myriah is also a former Trial Attorney with the Department of Justice. About The Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation is a co-production of HB, Fastcase, and Law Street Media. You can also hear the complementary (and complimentary) Emerging Litigation Podcast wherever podcasts appear. For [...]

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Facial Recognition: How It Works and How It Doesn’t

January 14th, 2021|Categories: Class Actions, HB Risk Notes, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Debbie Reynolds Founder, CEO & CDPO Debbie Reynolds Consulting Website Martin T. Tully Founding Partner Actuate Law Website Facial Recognition: Benefits & Risks Editor's Note: Imagine how great technology would be if it weren't for people. Since the beginning of time man has developed remarkable solutions to common problems. But leave it to nefarious, despicable, criminal or just plain dumb people to ruin them for the rest of us. You know, like gun powder, nuclear power, and the internet. Facial recognition programs and collection of biometric data would appear to have more benefits than risks, but those risks are there. As use of the technology proliferates we can expect more litigation as additional states follow Illinois -- the first to enact a state Biometric Information Privacy Act. Martin T. Tully of Actuate Law LLC and Debbie Reynolds of Debbie Reynolds Consulting LLC, outline these risks and how regulation and litigation is responding in their article: Facial Recognition Proliferation: Litigation and Legal Implications of Biometric Technologies. Below are a couple excerpts from their article, published in the January 2021 edition of the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation. --Tom Hagy Some FR technologies use a scanner to identify 4,500 different points of facial geometry to create a map of a person's face. The application doesn’t [...]

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Does Data Sharing and Zoombombing Cause Actual Harm?

December 22nd, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, HB Risk Notes, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Legal Writer Law Street Media Zoom Says Data Sharing, Zoombombing Doesn't Cause Personal Harm Zoom is a good name for this company. It seems to have come out of nowhere to become the new verb for web meetings, robbing that distinction from many more established competitors like WebEx and GoToMeeting, maybe because they don't have cool web-sounding names, although people don't seem to be saying "let's Skype later," as much as they used to. Sure, we still "Facetime," but Zoom really shot to the top when it comes to name recognition. According to CNBC's Ari Levy, Zoom reported fiscal third-quarter revenue growth of more than 300% after seeing 355% expansion in the prior period. The company's stock was up almost seven-fold this year but "pulled back in November on positive news surrounding a coronavirus vaccine," Levy reported. And with success comes risk, especially when dealing with private data.  Here is an excerpt of a post shared with the permission of Fastcase and Law Street Media. --Tom Hagy, HB Litigation Conferences Dec. 4, 2020 (San Francisco) -- On Wednesday [Dec. 2], in the Northern District of California, Zoom Video Communications filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ first amended consolidated class action complaint (FAC) on the grounds that the FAC failed to state a claim for which relief may be [...]

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Biogen Pays 22M To Resolve False Claims Act Charges For Paying Kickbacks

December 18th, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, News|Tags: , , , , |

The Justice Department has announced that Biogen, Inc., has agreed to pay $22 million to resolve claims that it violated the False Claims Act by illegally using foundations as a conduit to pay the copays of Medicare patients taking Biogen’s multiple sclerosis drugs, Avonex and Tysabri. Biogen did not admit liability in reaching the agreement. […]

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James Beck on the Drug & Device Law Blog: Something Both Sides Should Agree On (re Class Actions)

September 21st, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, HB Tort Notes, News|Tags: , , , , |

Senior Life Sciences Policy Analyst Reed Smith LLP Drug & Device Law Blog: Something Both Sides Should Agree On (re Class Actions) We’ll be very clear – as we have before:  We don’t like most class actions.  Indeed, if given our druthers, we would abolish Rule 23, as it applies to class actions for damages, altogether.  But that’s not in the offing anytime soon.  Today, we offer a class action decision that we think both sides, us on the defense and those on the plaintiffs side, can agree on, excluding only those responsible for the problem. In Pearson v. Target Corp., 968 F.3d 827 (7th Cir. 2020), the court came up with one possible solution to the class action “objector problem.” What’s that? Well, once a class action settles (as most do), all too often “objectors” come out of the woodwork.  While these objectors purport to assert the interests of the class, usually, all they want is money to make them go away.  Or, as described in Pearson: We address here a recurring problem in class-action litigation known colloquially as “objector blackmail.”  The scenario is familiar to class-action litigators on both offense and defense.  A plaintiff class and a defendant submit a proposed settlement for approval by the district court.  A few class members object to the settlement but [...]

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NJ Judge Overstepped in Striking Talc Plaintiff Experts, Verus Reports

August 21st, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Judge Abused Discretion in Striking Expert Evidence, NJ Appellate Court Finds Reverses 2016 Summary Judgment in Ovarian Cancer Cases On August 5, a three judge panel from the New Jersey state appeals court reversed a 2016 summary judgment granted in favor of defendants, talc manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and talc miner Imerys Talc America in cases brought by two women who allege J&J’s talc products caused their ovarian cancer. In its opinion, the panel ruled that Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson C. Johnson abused his discretion by serving as the fact finder in deciding the credibility of the plaintiffs’ experts’ opinions instead of merely assessing whether the doctors’ opinions were based on sound scientific methodology. The trial judge acknowledged that the experts, Dr. Graham Colditz and Dr. Daniel Cramer, were qualified but opined that their scientific studies and evidence were narrow and shallow, showing a preference for cohort studies and their larger sample sizes over the case studies relied on by the experts.  In overturning the ruling by the trial court and discussing the studies cited by Colditz and Cramer, the appeals court stated that those studies satisfied the criteria outlined in the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and also noted that size and [...]

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Microsoft Sued Over Data Sharing in Class Action

July 26th, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Emerging Litigation & Risk, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Microsoft Sued Over Data Sharing in Class Action Consumers, including individuals and companies, filed a class action complaint  against Microsoft in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming the company shared consumer data without consent to subcontractors and third parties, including Facebook, despite policies that stated otherwise.  The plaintiffs accused Microsoft of “misrepresenting its privacy and security practices, violating federal and state law, and illegally sharing and using its business-class Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange customers’ data.”  Read more from Law Street Media: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/microsoft-sued-over-data-sharing-in-class-action/

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Facial Recognition Update July 2020

July 17th, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Emerging Litigation & Risk, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Facial Recognition Technology -- Emerging After Decades of Development -- Draws Lawsuits and Proposed Bans  We sometimes forget that not all of the technical wizards who transformed our world were young “geniuses” jacked up on Starbucks, their shirttails hanging out in the ping-pong section of their open concept offices. Woody Bledsoe was born 99 years ago. As a young son of a sharecropper he demonstrated exceptional mathematical capabilities. Early in his career he had a dream: A machine that could think like a human, converse like one, and even recognize faces. This was as far back as the 1950s. This mathematician and computer scientist would go on to teach for decades at the University of Austin where he worked to advance automated reasoning and artificial intelligence. But what was his role in the development of the technology exactly? Did he perform work for a CIA front? And why, in his old age and suffering from the cruelty of ALS that would ultimately kill him in 1995, did he ask his son to set fire to a stack of old papers? Take a look at “The Secret History of Facial Recognition” written by Shaun Raviv for Wired Magazine, which explores why, among other things, “the record of [Blesdoe’s] role all but vanished.” If there isn’t a movie script in the works there probably will be soon.   Today facial recognition is used in such innocent and handy ways as pointing out [...]

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Cannabis, CBD: Advertising and Drug Test Problems

July 12th, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, Emerging Litigation & Risk, HB Risk Notes, News|Tags: , , , , |

COVID-19 vs Cannabis: Are Closures Legal? In the category of “damned if you do; damned if you don’t,” Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker shut down recreational cannabis shops, citing concerns over the spread of COVID-19. The dispensaries say the shutdown could seriously damage the industry. But, the governor said, the spread of disease will continue to damage the health of his constituents, especially as residents of states where recreational marijuana is illegal, come to Massachusetts to do their cannabis shopping. Citizens of the state may still obtain medical cannabis, as reported by WBUR. Too Much TCH: Can CBD Use Cost You Your Job? A New York truck driver has sued a CBD company for allegedly making a product, which he says he uses for pain relief, with too much THC, more than the label indicates. A Pennsylvania woman filed a similar case and a Missouri school bus monitor had a similar experience. Another Missourian blames the store where he purchased his CBD, saying he was assured the product contained minimal THC. All claim they were told they could pass drug tests. All failed their test. And all lost their jobs, according to a post on the Huffs & Puffs website. "Courtesy of a dearth of strict standards of testing, many companies tend to list lower values of THC on the product label," [...]

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