Articles Posted in Consumer Protection Law

Several privacy lawsuits against Google, Inc. have been consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware following a ruling by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML). In In Re: Google Inc. Cookie Placement Consumer Privacy Litigation, the JPML found that “eight actions involve common questions of fact, and that centralization in the District of Delaware will serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses and promote the just and efficient conduct of this litigation.” In a footnote, the JPML also acknowledged the presence of twelve other related actions that may also be consolidated for adjudication. In total, there are at the time of writing 16 cases consolidated in this action.

A new class-action lawsuit accuses Apple of raining on iCloud users’ service, charging that the company’s promise that “migrating from MobileMe to iCould would be ‘effortless’ was one of many “misrepresentations” to consumers.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple duped MobileMe customers into believing that they would get a newer, improved service, but that “their forced migration to the iCloud platform” has resulted in them “not be[ing] able to access the features they were promised by Apple.”

A class-action lawsuit against Apple (read it below) accuses the tech giant of double billing customers for downloads made from the company’s iTunes Store.

The lawsuit filed by New York resident Robert Herskowitz alleges that Apple charged him twice for purchasing a single pop song, “Whataya Want from Me?”

(Note: if you’re going to get double billed for an iTunes download, it should at least be for a decent song or movie.)

Here is what Herskowitz says he did to try and make things right, and Apple’s response.

Yahoo! Mail user Albert Rudgayzer sued the Silicon Valley web portal yesterday, charging that Yahoo’s revelation of users first and last names when they send email violates the portal’s own Terms of Service (‘TOS’), constituting a breach of contract. He seeks relief under federal and California state law.

Rudgayzer, a New York lawyer, alleges that he began using Yahoo email around October 2011. He filed the lawsuit in a pro se capacity in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (read the lawsuit below).

It’s like a scene from the Wizard of Oz: Righthaven is almost dead as a corporate entity.

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Philip Pro ordered “the transfer of all of Righthaven’s intellectual property and intangible property” — including 278 registered works filed with the U.S. Copyright Office — to court-appointed receiver Lara Pearson tasked with breaking up Righthaven’s assets (read it below).

The order stemmed from an earlier judgment against Righthaven’s for $34,000+ in attorneys fees owed to Wayne Hoehn, a Vietnam vet who successfully got Righthaven’s copyright lawsuit against him dismissed.

Until last year, the Righthaven litigation machine shook down consumers for unfounded copyright violations to intellectual property. But Righthaven defendants had an epiphany moment.

A new federal class action lawsuit (see below) charges that a host of well-known social media, app, and mobile device companies stole “literally billions of contacts” from users’ personal address books by illegally ‘harvesting’ personal data on the sly, without their knowledge or consent.

The 152-page complaint seeks monetary damages under both federal and Texas state law that could be enormous, injunctive relief, equitable relief “to mandate fixes to these mobile devices and apps” to stop alleged privacy violations, as well as attorneys fees and expenses.

Continental Appliances, Inc., a California manufacturer of a gas wall heater sold at Lowe’s, sued the unknown poster of a YouTube video on Friday for claiming that its product creates “an imminent danger of fire and serious injury” because of “uncertain fuel settings.” (see below)

The lawsuit appears likely to fail, however.

Here’s why.

PayPal was hit with a class-action lawsuit today alleging that the company violated a federal communications law by sending consumers unsolicited text messages.

The lawsuit charges PayPal with violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a federal law designed to protect consumers from unwarranted, unsolicited phone communication from automatic telephone dialing systems (read the lawsuit below).

The Federal Trade Commission announced Monday that it warned six (6) mobile app “marketers” that their background screening products may violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act if the makers of the products had reason to believe the reports generated by these products were being used for employment screening, housing, credit, or related purposes.

Yesterday’s press release (see PDF below) however, did not list the names of the either the companies marketing the apps, nor the names of any mobile applications over which the FTC expressed concern.

Repeated inquiries by Justia to the FTC, however, apparently prompted the agency to name them today.

Amazon.com faces a class action lawsuit (below) over cyber theft of personal account data from more than 24 million customers that did business with the company’s Zappos.com unit.

A Kentucky law firm filed the lawsuit against Zappos.com just one day after the footwear e-tailer’s servers storing customer account information were hacked.

According to Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, customers’ names, e-mail addresses, the last 4 digits of their credit card numbers, birthdays, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, and cryptographically scrambled passwords were stolen.