On February 3, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania preliminarily approved a class action settlement between Aramark Sports, LLC and a class of approximately 5,000 customers who made credit or debit card purchases from stores at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If approved, the proposed settlement would resolve allegations made by the plaintiffs that Aramark violated the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act’s (“FACTA”) truncation requirements by electronically printing receipts that contained (a) more than the last 5 digits of the plaintiffs’ credit or debit card numbers and/or (b) the expiration date of such cards.
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The Florida Supreme Court recently held that a commercial general liability (“CGL”) insurance policy that provides coverage for an “advertising injury” covers a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). The definition of “advertising injury” in the CGL policy at issue provided coverage for an “injury arising out of” the “[o]ral or written publication of material that violates a person’s right of privacy.” In finding that coverage existed, the court noted that the TCPA protects the privacy right to seclusion.
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A new advertising icon was released last week by a privacy advocacy group in conjunction with a group of advertisers and agencies as part of an effort to educate consumers about behavioral advertising and head off federal regulation.
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This past week, the Ponemon Institute announced their publication of the results of their fifth annual study on the costs of data breaches for U.S.-based companies. The study was sponsored by the PGP Corporation. A similar report for U.K.-based companies was also released. This year’s report, entitled 2009 Annual Study: Cost of a Data Breach, displays the results of the Ponemon Institute’s research of data breach incidents occurring in 2009.
Overall, as with previous years, the study found that U.S. organizations continue to experience increased costs associated with the data breaches they experience.
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The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois recently ruled that a plaintiff may maintain a suit for receiving an unsolicited text message under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991, even though the plaintiff was not actually charged for receiving the message. In the ruling, the court noted that in enacting the TCPA, Congress was concerned with consumers’ privacy rights and the nuisances of telemarketing.
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