Case Law & Court Rules

On July 1, 2015,  the Vienna Regional Court (Landesgericht) rejected a class action (Datenschutz Sammelklage) complaint brought by Max Schrems, an Austrian data protection activist, against Facebook Inc. for lack of jurisdiction The court (Landesgericht) found in first instance that it is not entitled to decide on the class action claiming that Facebook breached EU […]

On June 1, 2015, the District Court of Nevada dismissed without prejudice for lack of standing a putative class action brought by data subjects whose personal information were stolen against Zappos. Zappos was targ eted by hackers and the personal identifying information of approximately 24 million of its customers were stolen. Shortly thereafter, a number […]

On October 20, 2014, the District Court of New Jersey dismissed a shareholder’s derivative action against the officers of a Delaware company alleging breach of fiduciary duty in connection with three data breaches. The decision offers interesting inputs for companies’ officials with regard to potential data breaches’ risks and liabilities. This case involves a shareholder […]

On April 23, 2015, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) held that the privacy of the sender of an e-mail containing her personal and health information is violated when the email is forwarded without her consent. In this case, an employer of an IT company sent a promotional email to some franchisors of a real […]

On May 1, 2015, the Australian Privacy Commissioner ruled that phone call metadata is ‘personal information’ and therefore access rights apply. A data subject requested access to all his metadata information that Telstra, Australian telecom company, had stored about him in relation to his mobile phone service, including (but not limited to) cell tower logs, inbound […]

On May 5, 2015, an en banc Eleventh Circuit held that a court order compelling the production of a third-party telephone company’s business records (specifically: phone calls and cell tower location) pursuant to the Stored Communications Act, id. § 2703(d), does not violate the Fourth Amendment and is not unconstitutional. Courts in several states, such […]

On May 5, 2015, Myrna Arias filed a complaint with a California Superior Court against her former employment for invasion of her privacy. Arias v. Intermex Wiretransfer, LLC Allegedly, the employer asked the employee to download an application that would monitor the employees’ movements also 24/7, even when off duty. Plaintiff had no issues being monitored […]

According to the Guardian, on February 18, 2015, the UK government revealed that its intelligence agencies have been unlawfully monitoring attorney-client privileged conversations. The admission follows a decision (IPT/13/77/H) filed on February 6, 2015, by the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The order declared that regulations covering access by British Government to emails and phone records intercepted […]

On May 7, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the controversial surveillance program according to which the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting Americans’ phone records is not authorized under the USA Patriot Act. ACLU v. Clapper, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 7531. In particular, the court held that the […]

On April 14, 2015, in Sweet v. LinkedIn Corporation, a California District Court held that reference searches conducted through LinkedIn do not amount to background checks. LinkedIn Reference Searches are not protected under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), and therefore employers are not subject to its requirements, (e.g. obtaining candidate’s written permission, disclosures obligations). In this […]