Court Sanctions Lawyer for Including Social Security Number and Date of Birth Information in Filing — Engeseth v. Isanti County
[Post by Venkat] I’ve blogged about parties who complain when opposing counsel wrongly includes personal information (usually social security numbers) in court filings. Attempts to assert counterclaims based on this type of conduct typically fail. For one example, see In…
October 2009 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman Just a reminder that I am posting most of these types of links exclusively to my Twitter feed. * Tricome v. eBay, Inc., 2009 WL 3365873 (E.D.Pa. Oct 19, 2009). Court upholds eBay user agreement’s venue selection…
Court: Prosecutors Can’t Rummage Around in a Defendant’s Gmail Account — U.S. v. Cioffi
[Post by Venkat] The government is prosecuting a couple of Bear Stearns hedge fund managers for securities fraud and related offenses. I came across a story that prosecutors obtained evidence from the gmail account of one of the defendants which…
Judge Rejects Attempts by Texas Plaintiffs to Intervene in Beacon Class Action–Harris v. Facebook
[Post by Venkat] I mentioned last week that a group of plaintiffs sought to intervene in the class action filed against Facebook in the Northern District of California. The Texas plaintiffs who sought to intervene were part of a class…
Q3 2009 Quick Links, Part 4
By Eric Goldman Spam * Ars Technica: “a disturbing number of e-mail users respond to spam, and not just because they’re dumb—some of them did so because they were actually interested in the product or service.” I collected some empirical…
Texas Class Action Aims to Derail Facebook Beacon Settlement–Harris v. Facebook
[Post by Venkat] In late September, Facebook announced the settlement of a class action challenging its ill-fated “Beacon” program. Facebook set aside $9.5 million to settle the class claims and agreed to set up a privacy foundation. Facebook also agreed…
Q3 2009 Quick Links, Part 1
By Eric Goldman My system of managing news items that don’t warrant a full blog post but can’t fit into a 140 character Twitter post has broken down. So, I’m belatedly catching up on my backlog of things that caught…
State of the Net West Recap
By Eric Goldman Yesterday, the High Tech Law Institute and the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus co-sponsored the Third Annual State of the Net West event at Santa Clara University. The featured participants were 3 members of Congress…
June 2009 Quick Links, Part 2
By Eric Goldman State Regulation of the Internet * iAWFUL, the Internet Advocates Watchlist for Ugly Laws * Texas HB 2003. Part of the anti-cyber-harassment mania. Very broad statute with lots of room for prosecutorial mischief. * BNA (BNA subscription…
ABA Antitrust Section Consumer Protection Conference Recap
By Eric Goldman Last month I attended the ABA Antitrust Section’s Consumer Protection Conference. This post recaps some highlights from the event. A few overarching themes: * in light of the country’s economic malaise, the FTC is focusing its enforcement…