Articles Posted in Consumer Law

A class action lawsuit filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California names Stanford, USC, UCLA, the University of San Diego, the University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest, Yale, and Georgetown.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday on behalf of Californians, the City of Los Angeles alleged that the operator of The Weather Channel's mobile phone application has been "covertly mining the private data of users and selling the information to third parties, including advertisers."

On January 2, Penny Manzi and her husband, Jerry Manzi, filed a lawsuit against Apple in a U.S. District Court in Chicago. The lawsuit alleges that the MagSafe power adapter manufactured by the tech giant caused serious burns by setting fire to Ms. Manzi’s head. Ms. Manzi claims that she was using…

On December 19, the attorney general of Washington, DC, filed a lawsuit in DC court against Facebook. The complaint alleges that Facebook's poor oversight and misleading privacy policies enabled Cambridge Analytica to gain access to the data of hundreds of thousands of DC residents, in violation of the Consumer Protection Procedures Act, D.C. Code §§ 28-3901, et seq., and asks the court to enjoin the social media company from continuing to violate the CPPA as well as for civil damages.

The Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland released a report last week that discussed an investigation into a complaint against the social media network LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft. In the investigation, the Data Protection Commission found that LinkedIn U.S. had collected the email addresses of 18 million people who were not users of the network.…

Cable company Comcast has agreed to cancel the debts of over 20,000 customers, as well as pay back $700,000 as part of a settlement reached with Massachusetts’ Attorney General.

Last week, a New Hampshire judge ordered Amazon to turn over an Echo smart speaker’s recordings that may have captured key evidence in a double homicide that occurred last year in Farmington. Investigators believe that the recordings may provide information that could help convict the murderer. The question arises: how much data can tech companies collect, store, and use, and what does that mean for privacy?

California and the federal government have reached an agreement whereby the state will halt plans to implement its new net neutrality law on January 1, and the Department of Justice will withdraw its motions seeking to block implementation until the conclusion of ongoing litigation regarding state net neutrality rules. 

Navient has been sued by members of the American Federation of Teachers over its alleged practices directing borrowers into student loan repayment programs and various types of forbearance which are not eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. 

Plaintiff Lenora Rice recently filed a class action lawsuit against National Beverage Corp., the makers of LaCroix, in an Illinois state court alleging that their popular sparkling water is not “100% Natural” as it is advertised. Rice claims that LaCroix beverages actually contain ingredients such as ethyl butanoate, limonene, linalool, and linalool propionate, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies as synthetic.