Gibbons Law Alert
On August 6, 2021, the New Jersey District Court (Camden) denied both parties’ motions for summary judgment in Calio v. Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders, a case in which the plaintiff/employee, Matthew Calio, alleges, inter alia, that his rights under the FMLA were violated by his employer.
The trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Theranos, Inc., has finally commenced after numerous well-publicized delays. A little more than a month ago, the District Court for the Northern District of California denied Holmes’s motion to suppress evidence prior to her criminal fraud trial, finding that it was the “deliberate actions” of third parties (Theranos) that resulted in the loss of evidence contained on a database, not the prosecutors’ actions. Indeed, Theranos “knowingly and without comment produced an inaccessible” and encrypted copy of a database, and then dismantled the database hardware, rendering it permanently “unusable” only days after its production. In U.S. v. Holmes, the defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence, pursuant to Rule 12(b)(3)(C), of customer complaints and testing results, as well as findings from a 2016 report. Theranos used a bespoke database called the Laboratory Information System (LIS) that “housed, among other things, all patient test results and all quality control data at Theranos.” In 2015, federal government agencies (the “Government”) began investigating Theranos and, in April and June 2018, “served grand jury subpoenas on Theranos for information specifically from the LIS database and requested a copy of the database itself, along with the necessary software to access and search it.” One day after the grand...
A “delegation provision” in an arbitration agreement authorizes the arbitrator to decide issues concerning the arbitrator’s own jurisdiction over disputes before him or her. Absent a delegation provision, such jurisdictional issues are for courts to decide when adjudicating motions to compel arbitration. In its recent decision in Carrone v. United Health Care Group Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit clarified the circumstances under which courts may entertain challenges to arbitration agreements with delegation provisions. Background Michele Carrone filed suit in federal district court in New Jersey charging her employer and coworkers with discrimination. The defendants moved to compel arbitration. The parties’ arbitration agreement incorporated by reference the Employment Dispute Resolution Rules of the American Arbitration Association (AAA). Rule 6(a) of those rules sets forth a “delegation” provision, to wit: “The arbitrator shall have the power to rule on his or her own jurisdiction, including any objections with respect to the existence, scope or validity of the arbitration agreement”; and, further: “The arbitrator shall have the power to determine the existence or validity of a contract of which an arbitration clause forms a part.” Carrone opposed the motion to compel arbitration on the grounds that “(1) the arbitration agreement’s amendment provision rendered the agreement illusory, (2) the arbitration agreement as a...
Robles v. Domino’s Pizza LLC is a seminal case in the development of ADA website accessibility claims, particularly in the Ninth Circuit. The case has been the subject of a long awaited opinion in the Ninth Circuit, and an unsuccessful petition for certiorari. On June 23, 2021, after five years of litigation, on remand from the Ninth Circuit’s decision, the Central District of California granted the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, holding that Domino’s violated the ADA because its website was not fully accessible to visually impaired individuals. The court thus ordered Domino’s to bring its website into compliance with industry standards for website accessibility, known as the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, and to pay the plaintiff $4,000 in penalties. The plaintiff, a visually impaired individual who was unable to order a pizza from the defendant’s website in 2015, sued Domino’s claiming violations of the ADA. In granting summary judgment on remand, the district court reiterated the Ninth Circuit’s finding that websites and mobile apps are not “places of public accommodation.” However, where websites or apps like those controlled and maintained by Domino’s “facilitate access to the goods and services of a place of public accomodation,” such as a Domino’s franchise, the ADA applies. This holding rejected Domino’s argument that the ADA did not apply to...
In Pami Realty, LLC v. Locations XIX Inc., the New Jersey Appellate Division, in a to-be-published opinion, reversed a trial court’s determination that an agreement between litigants that an arbitrator could participate in settlement discussions and then continue as arbitrator must be in writing. After commencing litigation over a construction contract dispute, the parties agreed to participate in arbitration proceedings to resolve their dispute. On the second day of arbitration, the parties discussed settlement. When the settlement negotiations were unsuccessful, the arbitration resumed for a final day of testimony. Six weeks after the submission of post-hearing briefs, the arbitrator reported that he had finished his opinion and would be finding in favor of the defendant. Plaintiff’s counsel responded that the arbitrator “had no authority to act as a mediator in this matter and then re-assume the role of arbitrator,” and his “decision to act as mediator created a conflict of interest that neither party waived through the arbitration agreement.” After the arbitrator issued an award in favor of the defendant, the defendant moved to confirm the award. The plaintiff filed a cross motion to vacate the award, again arguing that the arbitrator had “exceeded his powers when he resumed the role of arbitrator after acting as a mediator mid-arbitration.” In a one-page statement of reasons,...
Colorado has become the third state to enact a comprehensive data privacy statute imposing compliance obligations on legal entities that collect or process the personal data of its residents. The Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) is based on and enforces many of the same key concepts as do other data privacy statutes and regulations. As such, companies that are implementing or updating compliance programs for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) will be familiar with the main provisions of the CPA and likely will have an easier time achieving compliance. There are, however, some important distinctions that companies must consider as part of any ongoing compliance efforts in anticipation of the CPA’s effective date of July 1, 2023. As a threshold matter, the CPA applies to legal entities that (i) conduct business in Colorado or produce or deliver commercial products or services that are “intentionally targeted to residents of Colorado,” and (ii) either (a) control or process personal data of more than 100,000 consumers per year or (b) earn revenue (or receive a discount on goods or services) from the sale of personal data and control or process personal data of more than 25,000 consumers. Notably, the CPA...
In a recently filed motion in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, plaintiffs Facebook, Inc. and Instagram, LLC (collectively, “the plaintiffs”) requested terminating sanctions pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37 in a trademark infringement and cybersquatting litigation against a domain registrar, based on the registrar’s destruction of over 11 million records. The motion relies heavily on a Special Master’s detailed report, which outlines egregious discovery abuses, including “ample evidence that Defendants failed to preserve responsive ESI, deleted ESI and withheld ESI.” In the motion, the plaintiffs requested a default judgment in the amount of $3.5 million ($100,000 for each of the 35 infringing domain names registered by defendant ID Shield), attorneys’ fees in the amount of $2,057,782.17, costs of the action, costs of the Special Master in the amount of $88,937, and a permanent injunction. As background, the plaintiffs sued the defendants for cybersquatting pursuant to the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, trademark infringement, false designation of origin, and dilution. Numerous discovery disputes arose in the litigation, including motion practice after the defendants: (1) failed to produce documents with proper metadata; (2) designated public documents as “confidential”; and (3) did not deduplicate hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. The plaintiffs subsequently requested the appointment of a Special Master...
In June 2021, Gibbons Director David J. Freeman received the Distinguished Service Award from the New York City Brownfield Partnership, an organization he co-founded. Further honoring David for his extensive contributions to environmental law and the development of brownfields policy, the Partnership published an engaging and wide-ranging interview of David. In the interview, David describes how the Partnership’s goal of creating a bridge between the private sector and the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation, which David developed with his co-founder, Dr. Daniel Walsh, grew over 15 years to include pro bono work, internships, and scholarships. The Partnership’s contributions to shaping brownfields law helped vitalize the Brownfield Opportunity Area initiative with its focus on neighborhood revitalization and community outreach. With the current focus at the federal and state levels on environmental justice for disadvantaged communities, the Brownfield Opportunity Area initiative has taken on an even more critical role.
On July 8, 2021, Governor Murphy signed into law three bills that amend the Worker Misclassification Package signed into law in January 2020 and intensify penalties against employers that misclassify workers. As employment practitioners across the state will recall, the Misclassification Package signed into law in January 2020 consists of a number of laws that grant the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development (“Commissioner”) the power to assess penalties against any employer that misclassifies its employees and to issue stop-work orders at the location where any state wage, benefit, or employment tax law violation is found. The laws included in the previously enacted Misclassification Package also allow the New Jersey Department of Labor (NJDOL) to post on its website a list of employers who have been found to misclassify their workers and to create joint liability for employers and staffing agencies for violations of state wage and hour laws. For a more detailed look at the Misclassification Package, see here.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently analyzed a “hotly contested issue in class action practice” – whether administrative feasibility is a requirement for class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Breaking from the First, Third, and Fourth Circuits and agreeing with the Second, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, the Eleventh Circuit held putative class representatives need not prove the existence of an administratively feasible method to identify absent class members as a precondition for certification of a class action.