Kim Peretti and Dominique Shelton, partners in the firm’s Privacy & Data Security Group, were quoted in a Law360 article discussing the privacy cases to watch in 2014.
Peretti noted that the top item on most privacy attorneys’ watch list is how judges will respond to arguments by Wyndham Worldwide Corp. and LabMD Inc., two high-profile cases against the companies over their alleged failure to properly secure consumer data, which will show the challenges to FTC’s data security authority to set standards for the private sector. “As soon as regulators hear about a breach these days, they are very interested in immediately looking to see what level of data security was in place for the information,” Peretti said.
“The cases will be very important in determining the scope of the FTC’s authority to regulate data security,” she said.
Shelton mentioned In re: Hulu Privacy Litigation, where the suit of Hulu users has the potential to create an overflow of class actions under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). “The Hulu case is really key to seeing if using the VPPA as a vehicle for maintaining behavioral tracking class actions is going to become the new cash cow for plaintiffs or if the argument is a one-time-only shot,” Shelton said. In a separate article on the ‘Hulu’ case, she noted that it differed from a previous case involving Google in that ‘Hulu’ did not require plaintiffs to demonstrate injury-in-fact.
View the full article titled Privacy Cases to Watch in 2014.
Posted by the Privacy & Data Security Group | Alston & Bird LLP