SILICON VALLEY BEHEMOTH Uber is no
stranger to court battles. Still, this week saw the tech giant face one of
its biggest courtroom confrontations yet: Trying to convince a judge to
block a lawsuit from proceeding to class-action status.
On Thursday, the company with a whopping $51 billion
valuation, went before US District Judge Edward Chen for a
hearing in which the judge pondered whether he would grant
class-action status to the suit, which seeks mileage and tip
reimbursement for 160,000 Uber drivers in California.
The hearing comes as on-demand companies like Uber, Lyft
and Postmates surge in popularity and reach, creating a vast pool of cheap,
flexible labor. According to the nonprofit
Freelancers Union, 53 million Americans now work as freelance
contractors. That’s about one in three US workers. And the American Action
Forum says independent contractors account
for nearly 29 percent of all jobs added between 2010 and 2014.
And the so-called 1099 economy already appears to be emerging as a key issue in the upcoming 2016
presidential campaign.
When Beau Phillips of
Virginia received a settlement check from AT&T in the mail this week, he
didn’t rush to the bank. Instead Phillips, who runs a small public relations
firm, decided to share news of his windfall by posting it on Facebook: My
share of the settlement against AT&T T -0.09% for fleecing
iPhone users out of fees, taxes and services for 5 years. Fifty four whole
cents,” wrote Phillips. “Chalk one up for the little guy! 54 cents of pure
justice right here!”
Others chimed in on Facebook with
news of their own pay-outs, saying they received checks for 23 cents and $3.54
(though a few said they got amounts as high as $60 and $114).
Shareholders in Under Armour Inc. are
bringing a lawsuit against the company ahead of a stock split the company
announced earlier this summer.
The case,
filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on June 18, alleges Under Armour
board members breached their fiduciary duties by approving a new class of stock
and changes to the company’s charter, issues that will be put to a vote at a
special meeting of shareholders on Aug. 26.
A federal court in Chicago
may allow a class action credit card breach lawsuit filed against Neiman Marcus
to continue.
The Dallas-based luxury
retailer is arguing against the court’s ruling, and said such a result “will
impose wasteful litigation burdens on retailers and the federal courts.”
Neiman Marcus filed a
petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit this week saying:
“This Court is now the
first court of appeals to address squarely the issue of standing in the context
of payment-card data breaches, at a time when data breaches—and resulting
litigation—are exploding in number. No company or governmental institution is
immune.”
The lawsuit, stemming from Neiman Marcus’ breach in
2013, is being closely watched. The appeals court overturned the trial court,
which had previously ruled that the plaintiffs seeking to establish a class
action suit over the data breach did not have standing.
Some
of you might recall that last month, hackers demonstrated how a Jeep Cherokee
by Chrysler could
be hacked, thus allowing the hackers to remotely commandeer the
vehicle, which safe to say is quite a nightmare situation not only for the
carmaker, but for owners of the vehicle who are suddenly made aware of their
situation.
However the company has since released a software patch
meant to fix the issue, so as far as everyone is concerned, the matter is now
behind us, or at least that’s what we thought. It turns out despite the patch,
some customers aren’t too happy about the hack in the first place and have
since filed a class-action lawsuit against Chrysler.
According to
the lawsuit, it alleges that Chrysler was well-aware of the
vehicle’s security flaws but did nothing about it. To a certain extent they are
right as the hackers behind the hack, Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller actually
warned last year at the Black Hat 2014 conference that there were software
vulnerabilities in the cars that could be exploited.
A pair of lawsuits in a
massive Indiana health care records hacking case is just the latest turmoil for
health care providers facing an ongoing onslaught of black-hat thieves
targeting the rich lode of EHR data.
The suits, filed in federal court, seek class action status over a digital break-in that exposed the private information of 3.9 million people's data, which was compromised by Medical Informatics Engineering, through its NoMoreClipboard subsidiary, and discovered in May, according to the firm.
The suits, filed in federal court, seek class action status over a digital break-in that exposed the private information of 3.9 million people's data, which was compromised by Medical Informatics Engineering, through its NoMoreClipboard subsidiary, and discovered in May, according to the firm.
REUTERS:
Zynga Inc reached a US$23 million settlement to end litigation accusing the
gaming company known for "FarmVille" of defrauding shareholders about
its business prospects before and after its December 2011 initial public
offering.
In its quarterly report made public on Friday, Zynga
said the settlement in principle was reached this week through mediation and
would have no financial impact on the company because insurers would fund the
entire payout.
The accord requires final documentation, and eventual
approval by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco, where Zynga is
based.
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