Tag: legal

Mexico’s Minimum Wage Set to Increase on January 1, 2023

On December 1, 2022, Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that, unanimously, the business and labor sectors, as well as the government, had agreed to increase the minimum wage by 20 percent for 2023, which will be applicable in the Free Zone of the Northern Border (Zona Libre de la Frontera Norte or ZLFN), as well as the wage applicable in the rest of the country. The increase will become official when it is published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (Diario Oficial de la Federación).

Before the increase was determined, the Mexican National Commission on Minimum Wages (Comisión Nacional de los Salarios Mínimos, or CONASAMI) applied an independent recovery amount (Monto Independiente de Recuperación or MIR) in accordance with the following:

  • MIR for the ZLFN: MXN $23.68
  • MIR for the rest of the country: MXN $15.72

On top of the MIR, the CONASAMI approved a 10 percent increase from the 2022 rate to the daily minimum wage applicable to the ZLFN and the rest of the country, resulting in MXN $312.41 (approximately USD $16.11) for the ZLFN and MXN $207.44 (approximately USD $10.69) for the rest of the country. The new rates would be effective as of January 1, 2023.

The MIR and the 10 percent increase—combined—would represent a 20 percent increase in the daily minimum wage rate which translates to more than MXN $30 per day.

Finally, Secretary of Labor Luisa Maria Alcalde stated that the above increases would directly benefit 6.4 million workers in Mexico.

Article By Pietro Straulino-Rodriguez, Nora M. Villalpando Badillo, and Ana Paula Delsol Espada of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

For more labor and employment legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

© 2022, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., All Rights Reserved.

Privacy Rights in a Remote Work World: Can My Employer Monitor My Activity?

The rise in remote work has brought with it a rise in employee monitoring.  Between 2019 and 2021, the percentage of employees working primarily from home tripled.  As “productivity paranoia” crept in, employers steadily adopted employee surveillance technologies.  This has raised questions about the legal and ethical implications of enhanced monitoring, in some cases prompting proposed legislation or the expanded use of laws already on the books.

Employee monitoring is nothing new.  Employers have long used supervisors and timeclock programs, among other systems, to monitor employee activity.  What is new, however, is the proliferation of sophisticated monitoring technologies—as well as the expanding number and variety of companies that are employing them.

 While surveillance was once largely confined to lower-wage industries, white-collar employers are increasingly using surveillance technologies to track their employees’ activity and productivity.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020, one in three medium-to-large companies has adopted some form of employee monitoring, with the total fraction of employers using surveillance technologies closer to two in three.  Workers who are now subject to monitoring technologies include doctors, lawyers, academics, and even hospice chaplains.  Employee monitoring technologies can track a range of information, including:

  • Internet use (e.g., which websites and apps an employee has visited and for how long);

  • How long a computer sits idle;

  • How many keystrokes an employee types per hour;

  • Emails that are sent or received from a work or personal email address (if the employee is logged into a personal account on a work computer);

  • Screenshots of a computer’s display; and

  • Webcam photos of the employee throughout the day.

These new technologies, coupled with the shift to remote work, have blurred the line between the professional and the personal, the public and the private.  In the face of increased monitoring, this blog explores federal and state privacy regulations and protections for employees.

What are the legal limitations on employee monitoring?

 There are two primary sources of restrictions on employee monitoring: (1) the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510 et seq.; and (2) common-law protections against invasions of privacy.  The ECPA is the only federal law that regulates the monitoring of electronic communications in the workplace.  It extends the Federal Wiretap Act’s prohibition on the unauthorized interception of communications, which was initially limited to oral and wire communications, to cover electronic communications like email.  As relevant here, the ECPA contains two major exceptions.  The first exception, known as the business purpose exception, allows employers to monitor employee communications if they can show that there is a legitimate business purpose for doing so.  The second exception, known as the consent exception, permits employers to monitor employee communications so long as they have consent to do so.  Notably, this exception is not limited to business communications, allowing employers to monitor employees’ personal communications if they have the requisite consent.  Together, the business purpose and consent exceptions significantly limit the force of the ECPA, such that, standing alone, it permits most forms of employee monitoring.

In addition to the ECPA’s limited protections from surveillance, however, some states have adopted additional protections of employee privacy.  Several state constitutions, including those of California, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, guarantee citizens a right to privacy.  While these provisions do not directly regulate employers’ activity, they may bolster employees’ claims to an expectation of privacy.  Other states have enacted legislation that limits an employer’s ability to monitor employees’ social media accounts.  Virginia, for example, prohibits employers from requiring employees to disclose their social media usernames or passwords.  And a few states have enacted laws to bolster employees’ access to their data.  For example, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which comes into full effect on January 1, 2023, and replaces the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), will provide employees with the right to access, delete, or opt-out of the sale of their personal information, including data collected through employee monitoring programs.  Employees will also have the right to know where, when, and how employers are using their data.  The CPRA’s protections are limited, however.  Employers will still be able to use surveillance technologies, and to make employment decisions based on the data these technologies gather.

Finally, several states require employers to provide notice to employees before monitoring or intercepting electronic communications.  New York recently adopted a law,  Senate Bill (SB) S2628, that requires all private-sector employers to provide notice of any electronic monitoring to employees (1) upon hiring, via written or electronic employee acknowledgment; and (2) in general, in a “conspicuous place” in the workplace viewable to all employees.  The new law is aimed at the forms of monitoring that have proliferated since the shift to remote work, and covers surveillance technologies that target the activities or communications of individual employees.  Delaware and Connecticut also have privacy laws that predate SB S2628.  Delaware requires notice to employees upon hire that they will be monitored, but does not require notice within the workplace.  Meanwhile, Connecticut requires notice of monitoring to be conspicuously displayed in the workplace but does not require written notice to employees upon hire.  Accordingly, in many states, employee privacy protections exceed the minimum standard of the ECPA, though they still are not robust.

How does employee monitoring intersect with other legal rights?

Other legal protections further limit employee monitoring.

First, in at least some jurisdictions, employees who access personal emails on their work computer, or conduct other business that would be protected under attorney-client privilege, maintain their right to privacy for those communications.  In Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc., 408 N.J. Super. 54 (App. Div. 2009), the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, considered a case in which an employee had accessed her personal email account on her employer’s computer and exchanged emails from that account with her attorney regarding a possible employment case against her employer.  The employer, who had installed an employee monitoring program, was able to access and read the employee’s emails.  The Court held that the employee still had a reasonable expectation of privacy and that sending and receiving emails on a company-issued laptop did not waive the attorney-client privilege.  The Court thus required the employer to turn over all emails between the employee and her attorney that were in its possession and directed the employer to delete all of these emails from its hard drives.  Moving forward, the Court instructed that, while “an employer may trespass to some degree into an employee’s privacy when buttressed by a legitimate business interest,” such a business interest held “little force . . . when offered as the basis for an intrusion into communications otherwise shielded by the attorney-client privilege.”  Stengart, 408 N.J. Super. at 74.

Second, employee monitoring can run afoul of protections related to union and other concerted activity.  The General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently announced a plan to curtail workplace surveillance technologies.  Existing law prohibits employers from using surveillance technologies to monitor or record union activity, such as by recording employees engaged in picketing, or otherwise interfering with employees’ rights to engage in concerted activity.  The General Counsel’s plan outlines a new, formal framework for analyzing whether employee monitoring interferes with union or concerted activity.  Under this framework, an employer presumptively violates Section 7 or Section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) where their “surveillance and management practices, viewed as a whole, would tend to interfere with or prevent a reasonable employee from engaging in” protected activities.  Examples of technologies that are presumptively violative include key loggers, webcam photos, and audio recordings.

Do I have a claim against my employer?

While federal and state restrictions on employee monitoring are limited, you may have a legal claim against your employer if its monitoring is overly intrusive or it mishandles your personal data.  First, an invasion-of-privacy claim, for the tort of intrusion upon seclusion, could exist if your employer monitors your activity in a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, such as by accessing your work laptop’s webcam or internal microphone and listening in on private affairs in your home.  Second, you may have a claim against your employer for violating its legal duty to protect your personal information if data it collects in the course of monitoring your work activity is compromised.  In Dittman v. UPMC, 196 A.3d 1036 (Pa. 2018), employees at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and UPMC McKeesport (collectively, UPMC) filed a class-action complaint alleging that UPMC breached its legal duty of reasonable care when it failed to protect employees’ data, which was stolen from UPMC computers.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found for the plaintiffs, holding that employers have an affirmative duty to protect the personal information of their employees.  Because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s holding was grounded in tort principles that are recognized by many states (i.e., duty of care and negligence), it may pave a path for future cases in other jurisdictions.  Third, if any medical information is accessed and improperly used by your employer, you may have a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires that employers keep all employee medical information confidential and separate from all other personnel information.  See 42 U.S.C. § 12112(d)(3)(B)-(C), (4)(B)-(C).

Conclusion

Employees are monitored more consistently and in more ways than ever before. By and large, employee monitoring is legal.  Employers can monitor your keystrokes, emails, and internet activity, among other metrics.  While federal regulation of employee monitoring is limited, some states offer additional protections of employee privacy.  Most notably, employers are increasingly required to inform employees that their activity will be monitored.  Moreover, other legal rights, such as the right to engage in concerted activity and to have your medical information kept confidential, provide checks on employee surveillance.  As employee monitoring becomes more commonplace, restrictions on surveillance technologies and avenues for legal recourse may also grow.

Article By Bonnie Henry of Katz Banks Kumin LLP

For more labor and employment legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Katz Banks Kumin LLP Copyright ©

Important Considerations for Mediation

“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find, you get what you need.” – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Successful Mediation. Unlike the regular adjudication of a legal dispute, in mediation there is no “decision-maker” to determine who is “right” or “wrong.” No final order or judgment is issued. Instead, a good mediation will result in a resolution created by both parties that satisfy both parties’ interests or concerns. Mediators are not looking to find fault or assign blame – rather, a mediator works with the parties to problem solve and find creative solutions and proposals.

Selecting a Mediator. In some court programs there is a list of “pre-approved” mediators. The mandatory Alternative Dispute Resolution program in the Western District of Pennsylvania has such a list. In the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas there will be no such guidance on preferred mediators. Pennsylvania does not have any national or statewide organization that certifies mediators. However, there is training available and basic mediation training is generally a 40-hour course covering problem solving, conflicts, communication skills, ethics and practical skills in role plays and other exercises. Mediators should have attended at least a basic mediation training course as well as have experience in mediating civil cases.

Article By Kathryn L. Clark of Strassburger McKenna Gutnick & Gefsky

For more arbitration and mediation legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

©2022 Strassburger McKenna Gutnick & Gefsky

What You Need to Know About the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch

The Consumer Protection Branch of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood parts of the country’s largest law enforcement agency. With a wide field of enforcement, the Branch can pursue civil enforcement actions or even criminal prosecutions against companies based in the United States and even foreign companies doing business in the country.

Here are four things that Dr. Nick Oberheiden, a defense lawyer at Oberheiden P.C., thinks that people and businesses need to know about the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch.

The Wide Reach of “Protecting Consumers”

According to the agency itself, the Consumer Protection Branch “leads Department of Justice enforcement efforts to enforce consumer protection laws that protect Americans’ health, safety, economic security, and identity integrity.” While “identity integrity” is relatively tightly confined to issues surrounding identity theft and the unlawful use of personal data and information, “health,” “safety,” and “economic security” are huge and vaguely defined realms of jurisdiction.

Under the Branch’s enforcement focus or interpretation of its law enforcement mandate, it has the power to prosecute fraud and misconduct in the fields of:

  • Pharmaceuticals and medical devices

  • Food and dietary supplements

  • Consumer fraud, including elder fraud and other scams

  • Deceptive trade practices

  • Telemarketing

  • Data privacy

  • Veterans fraud

  • Consumer product safety and tampering

  • Tobacco products

Business owners and executives are often surprised to learn that the Consumer Protection Branch has so many oversight powers. But the Consumer Protection Branch’s wide reach is not limited to the laws that it can invoke and enforce; it also has a wide geographical reach, as well. In order to carry out its objective, the Branch brings both criminal and affirmative civil enforcement cases throughout the country. In one recent case, the Consumer Protection Branch prosecuted a drug manufacturer for violations of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) after the drug maker hid and destroyed records before an inspection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The drug manufacturer, however, was an Indian company that sold several cancer drugs in the U.S. The plant inspection took place in West Bengal, India.

The Branch Has Lots of Laws at Its Disposal

The extremely broad reach of the Consumer Protection Branch comes with a significant implication: There are numerous laws that the Branch can invoke as it regulates and investigates businesses. Many of these are substantive laws that prohibit certain types of conduct, like:

Others, however, are procedural laws, which prohibit using certain means to carry out a crime, like:

  • Mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341), which is the crime of using the mail system to commit fraud

  • Wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343), which is the crime of using wire, radio, or television communication devices to commit fraud, including the internet

This can mean that many defendants get hit with multiple criminal charges for the same line of conduct, drastically increasing the severity of a criminal case. For example, in one case, a group of pharmacists fraudulently billed insurers for over $900 million in medications that they knew were not issued under a valid doctor-patient relationship. They were charged with misbranding medication and healthcare fraud, in addition to numerous counts of mail fraud for shipping that medication through the mail.

The Branch Has the Power to Pursue Civil and Criminal Sanctions

Lots of business owners and executives are also unaware of the fact that the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch has the power to pursue both civil and criminal cases if the law being enforced allows for it.

This has serious consequences for companies, and not just because the Branch can imprison individuals for putting consumers at risk: It also complicates the strategy for defending against enforcement action.

A good example of how this works in real life is a healthcare fraud allegation that is pursued by the Consumer Protection Branch under the False Claims Act, or FCA, because the alleged fraud implicated money from a government healthcare program, like Medicare or Medicaid. For it to be the crime of healthcare fraud, the Consumer Protection Branch would have to prove that there was an intent to defraud the program. If there is no intent, though, the Branch can still pursue civil penalties.

This complicates the defense strategy because keeping prosecutors from establishing your intent is not the end of the case. It just takes prison time off the table. While this is a big step in protecting your rights and interests, it still leaves you and your company open to civil liability. That liability can be quite substantial, as many anti-fraud laws – including the FCA – impose civil penalties on each violation and impose treble damages, or three times the amount fraudulently obtained.

As Dr. Nick Oberheiden, a consumer protection defense lawyer at the national law firm Oberheiden P.C., explains, “While relying on a lack of intent defense can work with other criminal offenses, it is a poor choice when fighting against allegations of fraud because it tacitly admits to the fraudulent actions. Enforcement agencies like the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch can then easily impose civil liability against your company.”

The Branch Works in Tandem With Other Agencies

The Consumer Protection Branch only has about 200 prosecutors, support professionals, embedded law enforcement agents, and investigators. However, between October 2020 and December 2021, the Branch charged at least 96 individuals and corporations with criminal offenses and another 112 with civil enforcement actions, collecting $6.38 billion in judgments and resolutions.

The Branch can do this in large part because it works closely with other federal law enforcement agencies, like the:

By pooling their resources with other agencies like these, the DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch can bring more weight to its enforcement action against your company.

Article By Dr. Nick Oberheiden of Oberheiden P.C.

For more consumer protection legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Oberheiden P.C. © 2022

NetEase Wins 50 Million RMB & Injunction on Appeal in Minecraft Infringement Litigation at the Guangdong Higher People’s Court

On November 30, 2022, the Guangdong Higher People’s Court announced that NetEase was awarded 50 million RMB (over $7 million USD) and an injunction in an unfair competition case against Shenzhen Mini Play Company (深圳迷你玩公司) involving Minecraft and Mini Play’s similar sandbox game Mini World (迷你世界).  NetEase has the exclusive right to operate Minecraft in China since 2016.  This is believed to be the highest damages award in China for game infringement.

 

 

 

 

Minecraft on left versus Mini World on right.

Minecraft (我的世界) is a sandbox game developed by the Swedish company Mojang Studios in 2009. In May 2016, NetEase announced that it had obtained the exclusive right to operate the game in China, and had the right to enforce any intellectual property infringement and unfair competition claims. In the same month, Shenzhen Mini Play Company launched “Mini World” on Android , and then launched the iOS version and the computer version successively. In 2019, NetEase filed a lawsuit with the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court, accusing multiple core elements of the game Mini World of plagiarizing Minecraft. Specifically, NetEase alleged that the overall screens of the two games are highly similar, which constitutes copyright infringement and unfair competition. The court ordered Mini Play to stop the unfair competition, eliminate the impact, and pay 50 million RMB in compensation. The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court also determined that “Mini World” was infringing the copyright in Minecraft, and ordered Mini Play to delete the infringing game elements and compensate NetEase more than 21.13 million RMB. Subsequently, both parties appealed to the Guangdong High Court.

The Guangdong Higher Court found that the two games involved in the case are sandbox games, which only set basic game goals and rules, and provided players with basic game resources or elements such as wood, food, creatures, etc. Players freely explore and interact in the virtual world. Players can use the basic game resources preset in the game to create virtual objects, buildings, landscapes, and even game worlds by destroying, synthesizing and building using the basic game resources. Minecraft mainly makes profits through user charges with the cumulative number of downloads from various channels exceeding 3.36 billion with more than 400 million registered users since its launch.

The Guangdong High Court held that the overall screens of the two games constitute electronic works, that is, “audio-visual works” under the newly amended copyright law, but the similarity between the two lies in the design of the game elements rather than the screens of the games. Therefore, it rejected NetEase’s claim of copyright infringement. At the same time, the court held that Mini World and Minecraft are highly similar in terms of gameplay rules, and there are many overlaps in the details of game elements that have exceeded the limit of reasonable reference. By plagiarizing the design of game elements, Mini Play directly seized the key and core personalized commercial value of other people’s intellectual achievements, and seized business opportunities by improperly obtaining other people’s business benefits, which constituted unfair competition.

In determining the amount of compensation, the court held that Mini Play, as the infringing party, should have on hand relevant data of its business income, but refused to provide it to the court without justified reasons, and should bear the legal consequences of adverse presumption.  According to evidence from a third-party platform, the profits of infringement by Mini Play far exceeded the amount of compensation requested by NetEase and therefore the upheld the award of 50 million RMB in compensation for unfair competition.  The Court further ordered Mini Play to delete 230 game elements from Mini World that infringed.

The original announcement from the Guangdong Higher People’s Court can be found here (Chinese only).

Article By Aaron Wininger of Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A.

For more intellectual property legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

© 2022 Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A. All Rights Reserved.

Congress Votes to Impose Bargaining Agreement to Avoid Nationwide Railroad Strike

Both the House and Senate have passed legislation under the Railway Labor Act to avoid a railroad strike by imposing the bargaining agreement brokered by President Joe Biden in September 2022.

The House already voted in favor of the legislation. (For details of the bill, see our article, President Biden Calls on Congress to Avoid Mass Railroad Strike.) With the Senate also voting to pass the main bill, by an 80-15 vote, the threat of a strike has been averted. The legislation moves to the president for his signature. Biden has indicated he will sign the bill.

While the House voted in favor of the separate, additional piece of legislation that would have added seven paid sick leave days annually for the rail workers, the Senate did not have enough votes to pass that bill. President Biden vowed in a separate statement to seek paid leave in the future not just for rail workers, but for all workers.

What was passed by Congress in its joint resolution was short and succinct. The three-page joint resolution stated that all tentative agreements entered into by the rail carriers and the unions were considered in effect as if they had been ratified. The exact terms of each collective bargaining agreement vary by union and were not part of the bill that was passed. This is a result of the special powers given to Congress under the Railway Labor Act.

All contracts contained generous wage increases: roughly 24 percent over four to five years with one extra day of leave. However, the other detailed terms will vary across the dozen national craft unions.

Article By Jonathan J. Spitz, Richard F. Vitarelli, James M. Stone, and James Verdi of Jackson Lewis P.C.

For for labor and employment legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Jackson Lewis P.C. © 2022

Employment Tip of the Month – December 2022

Q:  As an employer, am I legally required to allow employees to bring marijuana to an office holiday party?

A:  No.  While adult recreational use of marijuana is now legal in 21 states and the District of Columbia, the use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law and employers with drug-free and smoke-free workplace policies can prohibit marijuana consumption in the workplace and during employer-sponsored events. Employers who wish to prohibit use of recreational marijuana at the office holiday party should remind employees of the policies and ensure that they understand the policies apply at all employer-sponsored events – even if the event is held after work hours and off company premises.

Laws surrounding the recreational use of marijuana differ from one state to another and evolve quickly.  Before taking adverse action against an employee for marijuana use, an employer should consult the specific laws governing their jurisdiction.

Article By Laura Stutz of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP

For more labor and employment law legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

© 2022 Wilson Elser

Episode 6: Shifting Mindsets: How Client-Focused Approaches Can Improve Law Firm Success with Matt Spiegel, CEO of Lawmatics

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 6 of Legal News Reach!

National Law Review Web Publication Specialist Crissonna Tennison and Matt Spiegel, Co-Founder and CEO of Lawmatics, discuss the mindsets that are necessary for law firm success. Practicing law isn’t just about winning cases—it’s about creating a supportive client experience in and out of the courtroom. How can firms integrate legal technology to center their clients, boosting their business success in the process?

We’ve included a transcript of the conversation below, transcribed by artificial intelligence. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Crissonna Tennison

Thank you for tuning into the Legal News Reach podcast. My name is Crissonna Tennison, Web Publication Specialist for the National Law Review. In this episode, I will be speaking with Matt Spiegel, founder of Lawmatics. Matt, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to start Lawmatics?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, sure. So first of all, I’m very excited to be here, so thank you guys for having me. But yes, I’m Matt Spiegel, I am the founder and CEO of Lawmatics. I was a practicing lawyer, I don’t actually practice anymore, I haven’t practiced in like 11 years or so, but I still have my bar card. Long story short, I had a problem at my law firm that I wanted to solve with technology, and ended up starting a company called MyCase. So I founded MyCase, back in, like 2010. For those of you that don’t know, MyCase is now one of the biggest practice management software platforms on the market. So I was the original founder of that company, I also ran the company for five years. And then I left, and after a couple years doing some things unrelated to law and legal tech, I decided to come back into the legal tech space. I’m a glutton for punishment, and Lawmatics was what I decided to build. And it was really a product of what we saw when I was at MyCase. We saw the shift in the market, we saw lawyers starting to think about their law firm like a business and not just like a law firm. And when they start to do that, then they need business tools, right? They need the same kind of tools that other companies throughout industries, different genres of companies, tools that they’ve had forever, right? And so there was a little kernel of this idea of lawyers shifting to this mentality, you know, back in 2014. And so fast forward to 2017, we really saw this starting to become an opportunity that we thought was going to be a big one. And so we built Lawmatics to really address the business needs of a law firm and not as much of the practice management needs, right? The practice of law, we felt like that was pretty well taken care of. Our goal was to focus on the business side of it, you know, the lead management, the marketing, the automation, that sort of thing.

Crissonna Tennison

That’s awesome, and it sounds like a major change for you. When you were first starting your switch from being a lawyer to starting MyCase, what skill sets did you have already? And what skills did you have to develop along the way?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, so it’s a good question. I mean, obviously, starting a software company is pretty different than being a lawyer. But I would say that I was probably a bad lawyer. And I just was always, I always had the skill set to be a decent entrepreneur, I guess. But I was probably just a really bad lawyer. It was very different. Well, I should strike that. Because the way I approached law–I was a criminal defense lawyer. And so I was in court all the time, I was doing a lot of trials, you know, it’s a very unique practice area. But I treated my law firm like a business right from the get-go. So I worked at a big law firm for like, four years, and then I started my own practice. And when I started my own practice, I was like, “I need to treat this like a business.” And I think that was the way I thought about it, even more so than being a good lawyer. And I think that was just because I was probably very entrepreneurial, even then. And so I was thinking about my law firm as like a business that I could build, not necessarily, “I’m a lawyer, I’m going to practice law.” So I think I always had that mentality, it was just manifesting itself within the confines of the legal space with starting my law firm. But as soon as I saw this need in the market for a product, which became MyCase, I kind of ran with it. It was like, “Wow, I’m building this business, a law firm, which can be big, but it’s going to have a ceiling, or I can start this, like, software company, which the ceiling is unlimited.” That just felt so much more exciting to me.

Crissonna Tennison

I do think it is very interesting that you brought up the entrepreneurial mindset, because from what I’ve observed there does seem to be a difference between that mindset and a lawyer mindset. It’s really interesting to hear you break that down a little bit.

What are some challenges that you’re most proud of overcoming in starting both MyCase and Lawmatics?

Matt Spiegel

What I’m most proud of, I think, is the legal tech space is not an easy space to enter. You know, there are a lot of companies that get started and not a lot of companies make it through. The fact that I’ve been able to build two companies in legal tech that have both been able to support these teams–like what I’m the most proud of in MyCase and Lawmatics are the teams that we built. They’re the people who made the company go and at MyCase, we just had an incredible team. It was such a great culture and at Lawmatics I think it’s even better, like, you know, we’ve built such an incredible team with with such an incredible culture, and it’s such a fun place to be and to work at. And so that’s a hurdle, right? It’s hard to build good cultures. You know, it’s hard enough to build one company, one startup that becomes successful, let alone two in the same space, especially when the space isn’t the biggest space in the world. So I think for me, you know, that hurdle of coming back into the legal tech space and trying to innovate in it, I’m think I’m most proud of that. And then the fact that we’ve been able to build such great teams. And that has nothing to do with the legal tech space, that’s just, you know, company mindset in general, company building in general. I think if I had to say what I’m most proud of it would be the teams that we’ve built.

Crissonna Tennison

That makes a big difference. And I feel like the teams you’re able to build and the workplace culture you’re able to foster really is everything when it comes to building a company.

You say that you saw some problems that you thought could be solved while you were a practicing defense attorney. So what exactly were you looking for that wasn’t available?

Matt Spiegel

MyCase came as a result of client communication problems. So my first company was a result of actually a State Bar complaint that I got. When I started my first law firm, I got a State Bar complaint pretty much right away. And it had nothing to do with the way I practiced, it was nothing to do with the outcome of the case, it was simply, “Hey, you didn’t call me back quick enough.” Right. And this is a tale as old as time. This is like, the most common complaint at every state bar still, even 12 years later, is attorney-client communication. And so I thought there has to be a better way to communicate than like, just calling me on the phone when I’m in court all day, every day. That cannot be the answer. And so I sought to develop a client communication portal. And that is what MyCase started as. Now it evolved into something so much more powerful and such a more robust piece of software. But the initial version, the initial idea was just simply a client communication portal. And so that’s how MyCase came about. Lawmatics really came about from what I observed talking to thousands and thousands of law firms in my time in MyCase, and what we saw was this shift, this idea that lawyers were starting to think about their law firms as a business, and not just the practice of law. And when I saw that, it’s like these people, if they have that mindset shift, they are going to experience some challenges with how to do that. Right? If they’re going to start doing marketing, if they don’t have a way to measure those marketing efforts, they’re going to be met with challenges, if they don’t have the ability to automate touchpoints, nurture campaigns, newsletters, like all the different things that are kind of marketing 101, if they don’t have that infrastructure in place, they’re going to be met with a lot of challenges. We anticipated that happening. And that’s sort of the problem that we look to solve with Lawmatics. And again, we weren’t reinventing the wheel. Products to solve the problems that Lawmatics solves have been around for decades, products like Salesforce, or HubSpot, they’ve been around for a really, really, really long time, they are not new concepts. What is new is a platform that is specifically built for law firms. And that’s where lawyers are a bit unique. They do and I’m not gonna say they require, but they do significantly better and they adopt more often tools that are designed for them, because they do have some unique requirements. And so that’s ultimately the problem that we look to solve with Lawmatics.

Crissonna Tennison

So as a lawyer, and as a person who’s running a law firm, you want to provide a great client experience, but you actually need to find clients in the first place. So what can law firms do from a marketing and client intake perspective to help this process?

Matt Spiegel

It’s about the client journey, right? A law firm needs to think about, “What is the journey that a client goes through with your law firm?” and we break that journey down into three phases.

Phase one is the intake phase, which is from the moment that they reach out to your law firm, by whatever means, all the way through to the point where they sign a fee agreement, and they pay you your retainer. Then you have phase two, which is an active case, you’re actually handling a case for them that has a definitive start and end time. And then phase three is after the case is over. Now, they are a former client. That is a very important part of the relationship.

So what Lawmatics is designed to do is help you with everything in phase one and everything in phase three, the practice management software like MyCase, they are designed to handle everything in phase two. So that journey starts from the very moment that a client reaches out to your law firm. And you have to understand that from that very moment, you have opportunities to delight your customers, and you need to think about it in terms of customer service: what kinds of service, what level of service are you providing to your client? And this is right from the get-go. So if someone reaches out to you, and they fill out a form on your website because they’re interested in talking to you, and maybe they don’t hear anything from you until the next day, that’s not good customer service. The first impression that they’re going to get is that you don’t respond to things very quickly. And so that initial moment of contact, there’s an opportunity to delight your customer, right, you can immediately engage them and show them that you’re on top of it. And that’s not something that a lot of law firms can do without the help of technology, right? You need technology to help you with those automated touch points. And so that’s just one example. But every step of the journey is an opportunity to delight your customer with customer service, not law. Forget about law. Right now we’re just talking about providing good bedside manner, good customer service. I have a saying that I’d love to repeat, which is that you could be the best lawyer in the world, but if you provide bad customer service, you are going to have a failing law firm. And the vice versa is true. You could be a mediocre or even a bad lawyer, but you could provide really, really excellent customer service, and you could be wildly successful. The outcome of the legal matter is not always the most important part of that relationship.

Crissonna Tennison

That’s something that I never would have thought about. But that makes sense that as a lawyer, of course, obviously, you want to win your case for your client, but you really want them to feel cared for and respected and like they can get in contact with you. And yeah, that is a lot of work to keep that going, especially because being a lawyer and running a law firm is so much work.

Matt Spiegel

Some of it is totally impossible! So here’s another example, let’s say after the case is over, something that would be a pretty nice thing to do would be to just send your former clients a note on their birthday every year, pretty simple. But you’ve got 2000 old clients, how are you going to keep track of all their birthdays and make sure you’re sending an email? It would take you, it would take an army to do that. So if you have a tool that can automate that whole process, all you do is click one button when you first set up the software, and then in perpetuity, every one of your former clients is going to get an email on their birthday every single year. So there’s so much that you can do that you can’t do manual, you have to have technology to help you do it. I think that that’s really important for law firms to understand when they’re looking at, “Well, what does this mean? How do I provide good customer service? Like what role can technology play?” I think it’s just really important to think about things that way.

Crissonna Tennison

The last few years have been a really chaotic time, especially for growing law firms. So what kind of feedback have you gotten from users of Lawmatics during this time?

Matt Spiegel

So the feedback that we get from our customers is pretty profound. So it’s two things, it’s what Lawmatics has enabled them to do. And then, you know, maybe not as sexy of a response is the amount of time that Lawmatics has saved them. So obviously, a product like Lawmatics that does so much around automation is going to save you time that really can’t even be put into words, the true impact can’t just be measured. And you know, some law firms are saving 20 hours a week. And that’s just a crazy amount of time. And the impact that has on a firm as a whole is pretty remarkable. But it’s really what Lawmatics has enabled them to do. Right? I mean, Lawmatics has really enabled growth for its customers. I think that’s the way to look at it. I think law firms before you know, our customers, before they used Lawmatics, it was really difficult to facilitate big growth for them. I’m not saying that law firms couldn’t grow before, that’s not true. But our customers were really struggling with certain aspects of it. They were getting into marketing, they were getting into intake management and thinking about things beyond just practicing law and how to attract more leads, and how to convert more of those leads into customers. But they had no way to manage it all. Maybe some of them knew what best practices were. But they couldn’t actually deploy those practices because they didn’t have the ability. Lawmatics has really enabled them to do the things that they’ve wanted to do on the lead management, the conversion side, the generating leads, it’s really pretty cool to hear the stories from these law firms that were struggling before to execute on growth plans, and now are exceeding what they thought they would be able to achieve.

Crissonna Tennison

I’m curious to hear more about why it’s so essential for those people who are running growing law practices to invest in quality practice management and CRM software. At this point in the game, how much do firms risk falling behind their competitors if they don’t use one?

Matt Spiegel

Personally, I feel like practice management software, right, like the MyCases, the Clios, the Practice Panthers of the world right now, I feel like that’s kind of table stakes, there are definitely still a lot of law firms out there that don’t use a platform like that. And for those firms, there must be some valid views. And but the vast majority of firms out there will have some sort of platform in place to help them with their time and their billing and their case management. I think that that’s table stakes in the industry now for the most part. But if you don’t have that, if you’re like doing your billing manually, that just is a colossal waste of time. And you would be falling behind the rest of the industry significantly, just because of the time that you’re wasting to input billing hours and send out invoices and things like that. But as far as CRM, this actually has the potential to make you fall behind even more. So first of all, we are at the inflection point for like CRM software and law firms. It is starting to become the focus of law firms, their understanding just how valuable it is and what they can do with it. And there’s a massive shift going towards this type of thing. That’s one reason why, you know, if you’re not on that boat, then you just fall behind technologically, but more importantly, it’s the byproduct of using a product like this. It’s the shift in thinking that is happening where you’re really going to fall behind because what it means is that law firms are out there thinking about marketing. They’re thinking about lead generation, they’re thinking about how to get more business and build their law firm. That means they’re going to be going out and taking leads from you if you’re not also thinking about that. So it’s so much more than just a piece of software that you’re talking about adopting, you’re talking about adopting a strategy for your business and your growth. So if you’re not on board with that, you are going to fall behind in ways that you probably haven’t necessarily thought of just yet.

Crissonna Tennison

That definitely makes a lot of sense. When we look at recent years, how have expectations of legal clients evolved, kind of along the lines of what you’re saying, if more and more firms are starting to really reorient their thoughts toward how they run their businesses and interact with their clients? How have their expectations evolved? And what changes have you seen in law firms and their operations since you started practicing?

Matt Spiegel

What we’ve really seen, I think, again, to me, it’s just been the wide adoption of some type of software platform and that software platform being in the cloud. So in starting MyCase, I was one of the people who was at the forefront of this shift to cloud computing in legal. I’ve gotten to observe this whole thing over the last, more than a decade at this point. And it’s really profound. It’s really cool. Right? It’s a mainstay in law firms now, cloud software. And what that’s enabled, operations are just easier. And there’s less operative people at a law firm, I think now, right? It’s just, it requires less, because so much is in software, it’s automated, it’s easy to access, it’s just makes things more streamlined. And so we see less of a need to have operators in a law firm and the ability for lawyers to focus more on actually handling their cases. A lot of this depends on the size firm that you are at. There’s a massive segmentation inside of the law firm industry, right? Like if you have solo and small law firms, they operate very differently than midsize or large law firms.

Crissonna Tennison

That kind of goes along with things that we’ve heard about in the past and prior conversations about CRM systems in general. Do you think that law students will have to start having practical knowledge of CRM systems as they enter the industry?

Matt Spiegel

No. I mean, it can’t hurt. But no, we saw this with practice management, too. I remember at MyCase, I would go down to the law schools, and I would help teach classes on managing a law practice and practice management software and what that meant and what it was. So the concepts we were teaching, but we weren’t giving them familiarity with the actual software themselves. I don’t think it’s difficult to pick up, I don’t think it’s really that critical. What I think is important is understanding the importance of these concepts to the business. But I don’t think it’s critical for people coming into law firms to like, have knowledge of the systems. I mean, that would be a bonus, it would be cool. I don’t think it’s something that is required.

Crissonna Tennison

So along those lines, would you say there’s been a change in law school education, in terms of a focus on how to run a law business? Like is that something that’s showing up a little bit more in legal academia than it was in the past, or maybe when you were in law school?

Matt Spiegel

So when I was in law school, it was really not a focus. Within five or six years after I left law school, it started to become a focus again, I started getting invited into law schools that actually had practice management classes, right, like how to run a law firm. To be honest with you, in the last few years, I haven’t seen it as much. So I don’t know if there was a small shift towards it, like 10 years ago, and now it’s shifted away from it. Maybe people thought that it wasn’t a practical class. I don’t really know. But I don’t think that we’ve seen a massive shift towards it in the last five or six years. I think it’s valuable to be honest with you. I think everyone always says, you go to law school, and the stuff you learn doesn’t necessarily help you as a subject matter. It doesn’t necessarily help you, when you get out of law school. What law school does is teach you how to think like a lawyer. Right? And that’s like the old cliche, but I think it’s relatively true. If law school is focused on the practicalities of running a business and running a law firm. I think that would be incredibly helpful. But unfortunately, I don’t have that much influence over this.

Crissonna Tennison

For our listeners who are interested in checking out Lawmatics, can you kind of take them through the process of getting started using your platform? Where can they find you?

Matt Spiegel

Finding us is very easy, anybody can go to our website, www.lawmatics.com. And from there, what we always have people do is we have them sign up for a demo. And when I say signing up for a “demo,” I use that term a little bit loosely, because what you’re really doing is you’re going to be talking to one of our specialists, who’s really going to spend some time learning about your law firm trying to, first of all make sure that as a law firm, you’re ready for a tool like Lawmatics, like Lawmatics is going to make sense for you as a law firm, and then starting to understand “What do you do currently? What are your processes like?” and then starting to show you how Lawmatics might be able to help. So when we get on this demo, it’s almost like a consultation. We have a lot of best practices that we share with people during this consultation, this demo, to hopefully get these law firms thinking about things a little differently. We really like this process. And that’s the most important thing for people to do is to just come to our website, sign up for that demo, you’re going to learn a little bit about Lawmatics, you might learn a little bit more about your law firm and certain steps you might need to take in order to execute on some of the initiatives that you’re looking to execute on at your law firm. And then we will show you how Lawmatics hopefully can help you do that.

Crissonna Tennison

That’s awesome. It sounds like the Lawmatics experience can be tailored to a variety of different law firm types.

Matt Spiegel

Lawmatics is really for everyone and anyone. We see it all across the spectrum. Sometimes brand new firms that are just trying to set up their tech stack and Lawmatics is the foundation of it or law firms with several hundred lawyers who have been around for a long time, but they need to update their tech stack and they see a lot of value in it.

Crissonna Tennison

Our time is coming to a close, so are there some points you would like to showcase that align with your organization’s experience?

Matt Spiegel

Lawmatics is Lawmatics, it’s great if people want to check it out, I encourage them to do that. But what I encourage all lawyers to do, regardless of the software platform, is to just start thinking about your law firm a bit differently and start thinking about your law firm as, you’ve got to be good at customer service. You have to think about satisfying your customers outside of their case, you cannot think, “if I get them a great outcome, if I’m a criminal defense lawyer, and I just defended my client out of prison,” you can’t just assume that that’s going to be enough, that that’s going to make them really happy. What you need to do–and this is a point that I was thinking about earlier that I want to bring up now–is this is what you need to remember. And if you remember this, I think it gives you a different lens to look through almost all practice areas, right? Almost all of them fit into this mold, where it is the most important thing happening in their life. If it’s a criminal offense case, if it’s a personal injury case, if it’s a bankruptcy case, if it’s a family law case, immigration, all these practice areas, like the vast majority of practice areas out there, the case that you are handling for your client, it is the most important thing that they have going on in their life. For you it’s just another client, right? And so sometimes it’s hard to have that perspective. But if you think about it like that, if you think “Hey, wait a second, this is the most important thing happening in their life. If I had the most important thing happening in my life right now, how would I want to be treated?” If you shift to that line of thinking I guarantee you will provide incredible customer service, and that’s going to benefit your firm.

Crissonna Tennison

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially because if they’re dealing with something that is the most important thing in their life, and you’re the person guiding them through that, then that relationship is pretty important. So thank you for kind of expanding on that a little bit more.

Thank you to Matt Spiegel for taking the time to join us on the podcast to talk about Lawmatics and the different mindsets that can help a law firm be more successful. We really appreciate you joining us today.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Conclusion

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Article By The National Law Review Editorial Team

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Copyright ©2022 National Law Forum, LLC

PFAS Medical Monitoring Goes To State Supreme Court

A year-and-a-half ago, we predicted that in the PFAS litigation world, medical monitoring claims would quickly become a claim that finds its way into numerous PFAS cases with ever-increasing risks and cost to companies embroiled in the lawsuits. On November 15, 2022, the viability of medical monitoring claims with respect to PFAS found its way to the New Hampshire Supreme Court for oral argument. While courts are currently divided as to whether medical monitoring claims should be permitted to proceed without proof of actual injury to the plaintiffs, the result of the New Hampshire Supreme Court case will likely have ripple effects in other states where medical monitoring claims continue to proliferate.

PFAS Medical Monitoring Costs – The Current Landscape

PFAS medical monitoring costs is not a new topic for the litigation – it is something that plaintiffs’ counsel push for either as a damages component to a cause of action or as a term for settlement negotiations in PFAS cases. Yet, to date, only a few states allow for medical monitoring costs to be pled as a cause of action unto itself. Instead, states either require an underlying harm to be proven before the courts will consider awarding medical monitoring costs or states have outright rejected the medical monitoring theory of damages altogether.

The American Law Institute (ALI) is a prestigious legal organization that develops “Restatements” of various laws in the United States, including tort law. The ALI’s work and the Restatements, while not binding on courts, are widely regarded by attorneys, judges and legal scholars as a comprehensive understanding of many of the nuanced parts of legal theories. Through decades of work and revisions, the Restatement (Third) of Torts is now nearing the final stages of completion.

Significantly, the Restatement (Third) is contemplating including recommendations that courts allow plaintiffs to recover monetary damages for medical monitoring expenses, even though the plaintiffs do not have any present bodily harm. With respect to PFAS litigation, medical monitoring costs have been awarded in some states or through settlements to plaintiffs alleging some degree of injury from PFAS. The Restatement (Third) approach, though, opens the door to citizens in the country with no bodily injury from PFAS to participate in free (to the plaintiffs) medical monitoring to ensure that health issues do not arise related to PFAS.

The ALI’s approach to medical monitoring is a topic that is hotly contested in many legal circles, as awarding medical monitoring costs absent any injury is a highly controversial recommendation that seems to upend decades of tort law. Opponents argue that one of the very tenants of tort law is that there is an injury to the plaintiff – without an injury, there is no tort. Courts are currently split on whether they permit medical monitoring costs to be awarded to plaintiffs without any injury.

PFAS Medical Monitoring In New Hampshire

In Kevin Brown v. Saint Gobain, the plaintiffs’ drinking water was allegedly contaminated with PFOA as a result of a Saint-Gobain facility that discharged PFOA into local waterways, which fed drinking water sources. The case made its way through the USDC-NH, but the defendant certified the question to the New Hampshire Supreme Court of whether New Hampshire law permits the plaintiffs, who are asymptomatic, to bring a claim for the costs of their being periodically medically monitored for symptoms of disease caused by exposure to PFOA.

At oral argument on the issue, the parties and the Court held a spirited debate as to whether the seventeen states that allow medical monitoring as a form of relief are similar legally to New Hampshire, such that the state should adopt a broad interpretation and allow medical monitoring claims without proof of present injury. Defendant and parties who filed amicus briefs in support of defendants argued that the Court should defer to the legislature on the issue, as the legislature has primary responsibility for declaring public policy.

Impact On Companies

The issue of permitting PFAS medical monitoring claims without any present injury is one that has enormous impacts not only on PFAS manufacturers, but any downstream commerce company that finds itself in litigation (often class action lawsuits) alleging medical monitoring damages. The litigation is already shifting in such a way that downstream commerce companies (i.e. – companies that did not manufacture PFAS, but utilized PFAS in manufacturing or products) are being named in lawsuits for personal injury and environmental pollution at increasing rates. Allowing a medical monitoring component to the recoverable costs that can pled would significantly raise the risks and potential liability costs to downstream companies.

It is of the utmost importance that businesses along the whole supply chain in various industries evaluate their PFAS risk. Public health and environmental groups urge legislators to regulate PFAS at an ever-increasing pace. Similarly, state level EPA enforcement action is increasing at a several-fold rate every year. Companies that did not manufacture PFAS, but merely utilized PFAS in their manufacturing processes, are therefore becoming targets of costly enforcement actions at rates that continue to multiply year over year. Lawsuits are also filed monthly by citizens or municipalities against companies that are increasingly not PFAS chemical manufacturers.

Article By John Gardella of CMBG3 Law

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©2022 CMBG3 Law, LLC. All rights reserved.

ANOTHER TRILLION DOLLAR CASE:? TikTok Hit in MASSIVE CIPA Suit Over Its Business Model of Profiting from Advertising by Collecting and Monetizing User Data

Data privacy lawsuits are EXPLODING and one of our country’s most popular mobile app — TikTok’s privacy issues keep piling up.

Following its recent $92 million class-action data privacy settlement for its alleged violation of Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), TikTok is now facing a CIPA and Federal Wire Tap class action for collecting users’ data via its in-app browser without Plaintiff and class member’s consent.

The complaint alleges “[n]owhere in [Tik Tok’s] Terms of Service or the privacy policies is it disclosed that Defendants compel their users to use an in-app browser that installs JavaScipt code into the external websites that users visit from the TikTok app which then provides TikTok with a complete record of every keystroke, every tap on any button, link, image or other component on any website, and details about the elements the users clicked. “

Despite being a free app, TikTok makes billions in revenue by collecting users’ data without their consent.

“The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.”

While we’ve discussed before, many companies do collect data for legitimate purposes with consent. However this new complaint alleges a very specific type of data collection practice without the TikTok user’s OR the third party website operator’s consent.

TikTok allegedly relies on selling digital advertising spots for income and the algorithm used to determine what advertisements to display on a user’s home page, utilizes tracking software to understand a users’ interest and habits. In order to drive this business, TikTok presents users with links to third-party websites in TikTok’s in-app browser without a user  (or the third party website operator) knowing this is occurring via TikTok’s in-app browser. The user’s keystrokes is simultaneously being intercepted and recorded.

“Specifically, when a user attempts to access a website, by clicking a link while using the TikTok app, the website does not open via the default browser.  Instead, unbeknownst to the user, the link is opened inside the TikTok app, in [Tik Tok’s] in-app browser.  Thus, the user views the third-party website without leaving the TikTok app. “

The Tik-Tok in-app browser does not just track purchase information, it allegedly tracks detailed private and sensitive information – including information about  a person’s physical and mental health.

For example, health providers and pharmacies, such as Planned Parenthood, have a digital presence on TikTok, with videos that appear on users’ feeds.

Once a user clicks on this link, they are directed to Planned Parenthood’s main webpage via TikTok’s in-app browser. While the user is assured that his or her information is “privacy and anonymous,” TikTok is allegedly intercepting it and monetizing it to send targeted advertisements to the user – without the user’s or Planned Parenthood’s consent.

The complaint not only details out the global privacy concerns regarding TikTok’s privacy practices (including FTC investigations, outright ban preventing U.S. military from using it, TikTok’s BIPA lawsuit, and an uptick in privacy advocate concerns) it also specifically calls out the concerns around collecting reproductive health information after the demise of Roe v. Wade this year:

“TikTok’s acquisition of this sensitive information is especially concerning given the Supreme Court’s recent reversal of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent criminalization of abortion in several states.  Almost immediately after the precedent-overturning decision was issued, anxieties arose regarding data privacy in the context of commonly used period and ovulation tracking apps.  The potential of governments to acquire digital data to support prosecution cases for abortions was quickly flagged as a well-founded concern.”

Esh. The allegations are alarming and the 76 page complaint can be read here: TikTok.

In any event, the class is alleged as:

“Nationwide Class: All natural persons in the United State whose used the TikTok app to visit websites external to the app, via the in-app browser.

California Subclass: All natural persons residing in California whose used the TikTok app to visit websites external to the app, via the in-app browser.”

The complaint alleges California law applies to all class members – like the Meta CIPA complaint we will have to wait and see how a nationwide class can be brought related to a CA statute.

On the CIPA claim, the Plaintiff – Austin Recht – seeks an unspecific amount of damages for the class but the demand is $5,000 per violation or 3x the amount of damages sustained by Plaintiff and the class in an amount to be proven at trial.

We’ll obviously continue to keep an eye out on this.

Article By Puja J. Amin of Troutman Firm

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