Consumer products companies increasingly do business online, which means they frequently collect, and sometimes share, customers’ personal information. That practice makes companies potential class action targets under various privacy laws. Recently, the Ninth Circuit rejected three similar putative class actions under California’s “Shine the Light” law (STL), Cal. Civ. Code §§ 1798.83-1798.84, and Unfair Competition Law (UCL), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200, et seq. In three unpublished opinions, Baxter v. Rodale, No. 12-56925, 2014 WL 667474 (9th Cir. Feb. 21, 2014), King v. Conde Naste Publications, No. 12-57209, 2014 WL 607385 (9th Cir. Feb. 18, 2014) and a companion case, the same three-judge panel affirmed dismissal of class actions under these statutes because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, since they failed to plead that they asked the defendants whether their information had been shared with third parties. Therefore, the plaintiffs did not sufficiently plead injury.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Rejects ‘Gotcha’ Class Actions Under California Privacy Law