“We are proud to represent whistleblowers—people who take their ethical obligations very seriously and who are often in the best position to observe fraud on taxpayers,” noted Lieff Cabraser partner Rachel Geman, who represents plaintiffs in the case. “We are especially appreciative of our relator’s efforts to maintain cybersecurity and courageous willingness to step forward when problems arose.”

Read more about Lieff Cabraser’s False Claims Act settlement with Raytheon on the DOJ’s website.

About Rachel Geman

Rachel Geman is a partner in Lieff Cabraser’s New York office and the Chair of the firm’s False Claims/Qui Tam practice group. Her practice is dedicated to complex class action and False Claims Act matters, with present and recent leadership appointments in a variety of matters from copyright to medical monitoring to forced labor. Rachel is a community mediator and a mom to two teenagers.

Panelists will also be discussing various topics on securities litigation as well as artificial intelligence and ethics. NASCAT is a volunteer membership organization founded in 1988 which advocates for strict legal protections for investors and consumers. NASCAT is dedicated to representing victims of fraud, educating the public, and ensuring corporate accountability in order to improve access to justice for those who have been harmed.

For more information, visit the NASCAT website.

About Douglas Cuthbertson

A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s New York office, Douglas Cuthbertson has a practice focused on domestic and international consumer fraud cases, digital privacy, and securities fraud.

His past and present work includes securities litigation against the Brazilian petroleum corporation Petrobras, a financial fraud action against Morgan Stanley, consumer litigation against Volkswagen, as well as an airline overcharging case against British Airways where he was designated as Class Counsel (Dover v. British Airways).  Doug has also litigated numerous class action consumer protection cases under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act against large banks, satellite service providers, and utilities, helping result in the largest monetary settlements in the history of the TCPA to end harassing robocalls to millions of consumers.

Doug has acted in digital privacy litigation against Google, Disney, Viacom, and others, including as co-counsel for the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office and as Class Counsel in McDonald v. Kiloo A/S (and two related actions) on behalf of parents concerning the unlawful collection and use of their children’s personal information from mobile games to track and monetize kids. Leading nonprofit advocates described these settlements as “the biggest change to the children’s app market,” impacting Defendants’ “business models” to prevent children from being “targeted with the most insidious and manipulative forms of marketing.”

As part of the proposed settlement, Google has agreed to automatically delete location information by default after 18 months for users enabling specific settings for the first time. Users will also have the option to set their own auto-delete timeframes. Additionally, Google has committed to not sharing users’ exact location data with third parties, and will maintain a “Location Technologies Page” to detail its location tracking methods.

The proposed class of Android and iPhone users is represented by Lieff Cabraser attorneys Michael Sobol, Melissa Gardner, Michael Levin-Gesundheit, Michael Sheen, Jallé Dafa, John Maher, and Nicholas Diamand, as well as co-counsel from Ahdoot & Wolfson PC.

The full article is available on Law360’s website (subscription required).

Learn more about the Google Tracking Complaints lawsuit.

About Lieff Cabraser’s Cybersecurity Practice Group

Lieff Cabraser’s Privacy & Cybersecurity practice group is a nationally and internationally-recognized leader in safeguarding people’s privacy against the pervasive and often hidden ways digital technology intrudes into and affects our daily lives. The group has a proven track record of successfully taking-on the powerhouses of Big Data and social media, and making the online ecosystem safer and more just. The Privacy & Cybersecurity practice group’s honors include the National Law Journal’s 2019 Elite Trial Lawyers award for privacy and data breach litigation, and Law360’s 2017 Data Privacy Practice Group of the Year.

Data privacy litigation serves the dual purpose of holding companies liable for negligent or unlawful conduct and providing compensation for consumers and patients whose data is exposed or improperly sold and monetized. These cases send a clear message that data misuse and inadequate data protection is not just unacceptable but legally actionable, meaning that people whose privacy gets invaded and trampled can get real-world recourse for the info-violations.

Specialized and leading-edge plaintiff attorneys like the Cyberprivacy team at Lieff Cabraser are able to employ advanced legal strategies and high-powered investigative methods to expose the reality behind the multitude of reported data breaches and monetized and predatory privacy violations. Through careful analysis of the evidence leveraged upon ever-evolving state-of-the-art tools, plaintiff lawyers can assess the true extent of the damage and build solid cases seeking tangible redress on behalf of those whose innate rights to information privacy have been infringed, breached, or sold without consent at great profit to the data-thieves.

Successful data privacy lawsuits on behalf of consumers and patients typically include relief that includes companies being compelled to adopt meaningfully more secure data management practices and implementing forward-facing and stringent security improvements to safeguard personal user information. These remedies help prevent future breaches and can force-enhance companies’ commitments to protecting sensitive user and even visitor data.

One notable example is the case filed by Lieff Cabraser against Plaid Inc., which accused the company of serious consumer privacy invasions with regard to sensitive financial and bank account data. The settlement won on behalf of consumers nationwide required Plaid not just to pay $58 million in restitution, but required the company to establish new, robust privacy protection policies and strategies. Lieff Cabraser also successfully represented individuals across the U.S. whose privacy was breached by Google’s Street View vehicles improperly collecting personal data via Wi-Fi networks. This work led to a $13 million settlement from Google, monies that in this instance were distributed to a series of non-profit organizations focused on upholding and protecting online consumer privacy.

Data privacy litigation on behalf of patients and consumers also heightens public awareness about the significance of data breaches and illegal data-sharing, and the potential repercussions both financial and practice that companies will face if they neglect their lawful privacy obligations or predatorily share and sell user data. As may not be surprising, and as a rule, businesses that face successful prosecution for user privacy failures re-prioritize data security and commit to stringently upholding proper data protection and security practices to avoid recurrent fines, lawsuits, and court-ordered data restructuring along with substantially increased privacy protection obligations.

Data privacy litigation plays a vital role in preserving data privacy rights and securing the personal information of millions of individuals throughout the U.S.. By holding companies accountable for data misuse and breaches, plaintiff lawyers and the cases they bring on behalf of the public deliver justice to the affected parties and compel the restructuring of a more secure digital ecosystem for everyone.

Lawyers Dedicated to Preserving Privacy

Lieff Cabraser’s Cybersecurity and Data Privacy practice group is committed to ensuring that the fundamental right to privacy is respected and maintained as technology evolves to grow ever more powerful, pervasive, and intrusive.

Our Cybersecurity attorneys have the experience and technical expertise necessary to successfully litigate a comprehensive range of privacy claims. We represent individuals in precedent-setting cases against powerful technology, social media, healthcare, and entertainment companies, as we continue to reaffirm and enforce all the privacy protections the law provides to keep secure the most sensitive personal information of citizens in the U.S. and around the world.

For more information on Lieff Cabraser’s Cybersecurity/Data Privacy practice group, click here.

As the class action landscape is ever-changing, the workshop will address key challenges, such as proving standing and navigating the complexities of arbitration clauses, that remain central to the fight for consumer justice. The workshop will also explore opportunities for federal claims in state courts, mass arbitration filings, and strategies for cases unaffected by arbitration concerns.

This event promises to be an invaluable experience for attorneys looking to deepen their understanding of class action practice and improve their ability to champion consumer rights.

For more information and to view the full workshop agenda, visit NACA’s website.

About Douglas Cuthbertson

A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s New York office, Douglas Cuthbertson has a practice focused on domestic and international consumer fraud cases, digital privacy, and securities fraud.

His past and present work includes securities litigation against the Brazilian petroleum corporation Petrobras, a financial fraud action against Morgan Stanley, consumer litigation against Volkswagen, as well as an airline overcharging case against British Airways where he was designated as Class Counsel (Dover v. British Airways).  Doug has also litigated numerous class action consumer protection cases under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act against large banks, satellite service providers, and utilities, helping result in the largest monetary settlements in the history of the TCPA to end harassing robocalls to millions of consumers.

Doug has acted in digital privacy litigation against Google, Disney, Viacom, and others, including as co-counsel for the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office and as Class Counsel in McDonald v. Kiloo A/S (and two related actions) on behalf of parents concerning the unlawful collection and use of their children’s personal information from mobile games to track and monetize kids. Leading nonprofit advocates described these settlements as “the biggest change to the children’s app market,” impacting Defendants’ “business models” to prevent children from being “targeted with the most insidious and manipulative forms of marketing.”

The exceptional list of panelists includes:

Serge Egelman, Research Director of the Usable Security & Privacy Group, International Computer Science Institute (ICSI); Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) University of California, Berkeley

Aaron Mackey, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Jeewon Serrato, Baker Hostetler

Lieff Cabraser is a proud sponsor of the Conference.

For more information regarding speakers, agenda, and registration, visit the BASF website.

About David Rudolph

A partner in our San Francisco office, David Rudolph is a member of the firm’s Cybersecurity and Data Privacy and Antitrust and Intellectual Property practice groups. He has extensive experience litigating core technical issues in privacy cases, including in In re Anthem, Inc. Data Breach Litigation, MDL No. 2617 (N.D. Cal.), arising from a data breach that affected nearly 80 million of Anthem’s members, and in Campbell v. Facebook, Inc., No. 5:13-cv- 5996 (N.D. Cal.), in which Facebook users asserted that Facebook violated their privacy rights by scanning their private email messages.

David has represented end-payor classes in pharmaceutical antitrust litigation, including in the Cipro drug antitrust cases, the Restasis antitrust litigation, and the Generic Pharmaceuticals Price-Fixing cases. In 2017, David shared the “Outstanding Private Practice Antitrust Achievement” award from the American Antitrust Institute for his work on the Cipro case. He also represents plaintiffs in In re Domestic Airline Travel Antitrust Litigation (D.D.C.), a class action lawsuit alleging a conspiracy by United, American, Delta, and Southwest to artificially inflate domestic airline ticket prices by artificially limiting seating capacity.

As reported by Courthouse News, on Tuesday, October 11, 2022, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins of the Northern District of California signaled that he will likely grant final approval to a recent settlement aimed at resolving privacy invasion claims in a class action lawsuit against Google.

The lawsuit, filed by Lieff Cabraser in April 2021 on behalf of a class of Android users, alleged that a COVID-19 contact-tracing app co-created by Google improperly exposed users’ private data. According to the complaint, a security flaw in Google’s app gave third parties access to users’ protected personal medical information.

In a motion filed on Tuesday, plaintiffs claimed that Google knew of the issue as early as February 2021, but chose not to inform the public and not to take measures to address the alleged security flaws.

The terms of the deal require Google to fix any related medical privacy intrusions, create a way to find and eliminate any data it may have improperly obtained/provided, and confirm that certain security measures are and will remain in place to better protect the privacy of contract tracing app users going forward.

Lieff Cabraser partner Douglas Cuthbertson, a lead attorney on the case, noted that the case took significant technical expertise directed toward understanding “arcane details.”

“We are not aware of any case that has been brought on these claims and these kinds of technical issues around system laws,” noted Cuthbertson. “That is really where a lot of the time was spent and why we think it’s reasonable. We short-circuited a tremendous amount of time in discovery.”

He added that the case was unprecedented for a class action settlement with a big tech company.

“When we filed this case in April, we were really alone in doing this,” he said. “We were taking a significant risk.”

Read the full article on the Courthouse News website.

About Douglas Cuthbertson

A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s New York office, Douglas Cuthbertson has a practice focused on domestic and international consumer fraud cases, digital privacy, and securities fraud.

His past and present work includes securities litigation against the Brazilian petroleum corporation Petrobras, a financial fraud action against Morgan Stanley, consumer litigation against Volkswagen, as well as an airline overcharging case against British Airways where he was designated as Class Counsel (Dover v. British Airways).  Doug has also litigated numerous class action consumer protection cases under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act against large banks, satellite service providers, and utilities, helping result in the largest monetary settlements in the history of the TCPA to end harassing robocalls to millions of consumers.

Doug has acted in digital privacy litigation against Google, Disney, Viacom, and others, including as co-counsel for the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office and as Class Counsel in McDonald v. Kiloo A/S (and two related actions) on behalf of parents concerning the unlawful collection and use of their children’s personal information from mobile games to track and monetize kids. Leading nonprofit advocates described these settlements as “the biggest change to the children’s app market,” impacting Defendants’ “business models” to prevent children from being “targeted with the most insidious and manipulative forms of marketing.”

For more information regarding speakers, agenda, and registration, visit the Practising Law Institute website.

About David Rudolph

A partner in our San Francisco office, David Rudolph is a member of the firm’s Cybersecurity and Data Privacy and Antitrust and Intellectual Property practice groups. He has extensive experience litigating core technical issues in privacy cases, including in In re Anthem, Inc. Data Breach Litigation, MDL No. 2617 (N.D. Cal.), arising from a data breach that affected nearly 80 million of Anthem’s members, and in Campbell v. Facebook, Inc., No. 5:13-cv- 5996 (N.D. Cal.), in which Facebook users asserted that Facebook violated their privacy rights by scanning their private email messages.

David has represented end-payor classes in pharmaceutical antitrust litigation, including in the Cipro drug antitrust cases, the Restasis antitrust litigation, and the Generic Pharmaceuticals Price-Fixing cases. In 2017, David shared the “Outstanding Private Practice Antitrust Achievement” award from the American Antitrust Institute for his work on the Cipro case. He also represents plaintiffs in In re Domestic Airline Travel Antitrust Litigation (D.D.C.), a class action lawsuit alleging a conspiracy by United, American, Delta, and Southwest to artificially inflate domestic airline ticket prices by artificially limiting seating capacity.

Lieff Cabraser represents users in a federal class action data privacy lawsuit claiming Meta Platforms Inc.’s Pixel tracking tool sent their private video viewing activity from online platforms to Facebook without their consent, in violation of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act.

A large number of digital platforms that host videos are now facing similar lawsuits, including companies’ like the NFL and NPR. The complaints allege the businesses knowingly and unlawfully disclose protected data by allowing Meta’s embedded Pixel code to share a subscriber’s viewing history along with their unique Facebook ID.

“It’s critical that people be able to watch what they want to watch and not have the whole world know about it, and have it be monetized and exploited and correlated and aggregated with other data,” said Lieff Cabraser partner Douglas Cuthbertson, who is a member of the firm’s  Privacy & Cybersecurity practice group, and a lead attorney on the case.

A requirement of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) is that a provider must obtain a user’s informed and written consent before disclosing their video viewing data to any third party. According to Cuthbertson, basic privacy policies, such as those currently used by Meta and other large media companies, don’t meet this required standard. Cuthbertson noted that “consent must be obtained via a separate form from other user agreements,” and added that the platforms he has investigated in VPPA cases have failed to do so.

Read the full article on the Bloomberg Law website.

About Douglas Cuthbertson

A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s New York office, Douglas Cuthbertson has a practice focused on domestic and international consumer fraud cases, digital privacy, and securities fraud.

His past and present work includes securities litigation against the Brazilian petroleum corporation Petrobras, a financial fraud action against Morgan Stanley, consumer litigation against Volkswagen, as well as an airline overcharging case against British Airways where he was designated as Class Counsel (Dover v. British Airways).  Doug has also litigated numerous class action consumer protection cases under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act against large banks, satellite service providers, and utilities, helping result in the largest monetary settlements in the history of the TCPA to end harassing robocalls to millions of consumers.

Doug has acted in digital privacy litigation against Google, Disney, Viacom, and others, including as co-counsel for the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office and as Class Counsel in McDonald v. Kiloo A/S (and two related actions) on behalf of parents concerning the unlawful collection and use of their children’s personal information from mobile games to track and monetize kids. Leading nonprofit advocates described these settlements as “the biggest change to the children’s app market,” impacting Defendants’ “business models” to prevent children from being “targeted with the most insidious and manipulative forms of marketing.”

Plaid provides third-party bank account authentication services for several well-known payment apps, including Venmo, Coinbase, Square’s Cash App, and Stripe. Plaintiffs alleged Plaid unlawfully collected personal banking information when consumers used mobile apps to send and receive money from their financial accounts. The lawsuit claimed that Plaid misled consumers and violated their privacy and the privacy of the putative class members by obtaining sensitive data about their financial accounts without authorization.

In the Order, Judge Ryu recognized the strength of Plaintiffs’ claims and praised the $58M settlement, which includes robust injunctive relief designed to benefit consumers. As part of the proposed settlement, Plaid agreed to implement significant business practice changes designed to remediate alleged privacy violations, improve user control over private login information and financial data, and safeguard user privacy going forward.

Learn more about the Plaid Financial Privacy Violations Class Action.