An Illinois appellate court recently affirmed grant of summary judgment in favor of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) in a class-action lawsuit alleging that ComEd violated the Illinois Employee Credit Privacy Act (“Act”), 820 ILCS 70/1 et seq., by investigating the plaintiff’s credit history in connection with a conditional offer of employment and ultimately refusing to hire her as a result of that investigation. Many Illinois residents are familiar with ComEd, the public utility company that provides electrical services to nearly four million customers in Illinois. In 2017, ComEd offered the plaintiff a conditional offer for a part-time position. The offer…

Sex traffickers are as capable as the rest of us of using technology for their businesses, including social media. But what if we could prevent them from using social media for their sex trafficking? Annie McAdams is a personal injury attorney based out of Houston, TX who has sued insurance companies, drunk drivers, restaurants, and real estate developers. Now she’s taking on Facebook and other major tech companies. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 says internet companies are not responsible for what their users post, but according to McAdams, separate laws should exist that require Facebook and…

A recent decision by the Eleventh Circuit federal court of appeals adds another arrow to class action defendants’ quiver by making it more difficult for plaintiffs to establish standing to sue under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). The appellate court ruled that a single text message did not cause sufficient harm to sue in federal court. In Salcedo v. Hanna, 936 F.3d 1162 (11th Cir. 2019), the plaintiff, John Salcedo, received a single form text message from his former attorney offering a discount on the attorney’s services. After receiving the message, Salcedo filed suit in the district court alleging that the…

In a putative class action recently filed in a Florida federal district court against fast-food chain Burger King, the tagline for the Impossible Whopper of “100% Whopper, 0% Beef” is misleading. According to the plaintiff, Philip Williams, although Burger King advertises the Impossible Whopper as being a meat-free option, it is contaminated by meat by-product because it gets cooked on the same grill as other meat products. The lawsuit accuses Burger King of “false and misleading business practices” and benefiting monetarily from claiming to offer customers a vegan option that in reality is not actually vegan. The plaintiff seeks to…

Labor unions are supposed to negotiate with employers on behalf of the workers, but according to a recent lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler, the officials of the United Auto Workers union (UAW) allegedly exploited their position to line their own pockets, rather than negotiate better terms for their workers. According to the lawsuit, filed by General Motors, Fiat Chrysler allegedly bribed UAW officials in order to get more favorable rates than their competitors. Gary Jones, the former president of the UAW, has not been charged by the Justice Department, but he came under scrutiny when federal prosecutors found that union officers…

A federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois has given final approval to three major cruise lines and a travel agency of a $12.5 million class-action settlement. The defendants were accused of bombarding consumers nationwide with prerecorded telemarketing calls promoting cruise trips without their consent. Defendants Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruises Limited, Norwegian Cruise Lines Limited, and Resort Marketing Group, the travel agency that allegedly operated the auto-dialing system, contributed to the settlement fund together. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants’ use of unsolicited robocalls violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. More than 270,000 valid claims were filed following…

Politics is an ugly business and campaigns are often littered with smears and negative advertisements. For Joseph J. Tirio, the race for McHenry County Clerk got particularly ugly and resulted in the publishing of three allegedly defamatory flyers in opposition to Tirio’s candidacy leading up to the 2018 primary election. The first flyer depicted Tirio as a burglar wearing a mask and gloves and alleged that “Crooked Joe Tirio” had a “secret taxpayer-funded slush fund” and that he was “just another crooked politician.” The back of the flyer stated, in part, that Tirio allegedly used the slush fund to hire…

In early 2017, the Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA), 15 U.S.C. §45b, took effect. With the passage of this law, the Federal Trade Commission has begun using the CRFA to crack down on businesses that use non-disparagement provisions in consumer contracts to attempt to prevent consumers from posting negative reviews in order to make a product seem more favorable than it really is. To date the FTC has launched numerous investigations into suspected violations of the CRFA and has brought and settled a handful of administrative actions against companies. The CRFA is meant to protect consumers’ ability to share their…

Real product reviews are a great tool for helping consumers make better, informed decisions. Many of these reviews come from real customers who really used the product. Other reviews, however—particularly those on websites, in blogs, and on social media—are not from legitimate customers but come from companies that use fake reviews to paint a pretty picture of their products and boost their bottom line. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) set its sights on a cosmetic company accused of posting fake consumer reviews of its own products online. According to a leaked internal email, the CEO of the…

A federal judge reversed himself and reinstated part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann against The Washington Post. The lawsuit alleged that the newspaper libeled the teen in its coverage of his encounter with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial earlier this year. The federal judge assigned to the case, Judge William O. Bertelsman, originally dismissed the suit back in July on First Amendment grounds. After a request for reconsideration, the Judge reversed himself saying that the libel suit could go forward while narrowing the scope of the suit from 33…

Earlier this year, a federal grand jury indicted pioneer of self-driving car technology and serial entrepreneur, Anthony Levandowski, with trade secret theft. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California charged Levandowski with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google under 18 U.S.C. § 1832 of the Economic Espionage Act (EEA). According to the indictment, Levandowski allegedly downloaded more than 14,000 files containing crucial information about Google’s autonomous-vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016. The indictment also alleges that Levandowski then made an unauthorized transfer of the files to his…