In the News

A Cook County Circuit Court Judge found Pipeline Health to be in indirect civil contempt after violating an April 9th temporary restraining order prohibiting them from winding down Westlake Hospital’s operations. Pipeline was ordered to restore services to the intensive care, obstetrics and mental health units. The hospital was also instructed to accept ambulances in their emergency department. If services are not restored, Pipeline will have to pay $200,000 for every day it is out of compliance.

After three days of trial, an Oregon federal jury concluded ViSalus made more than 1.8 million robocalls to class members, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The $925 million jury verdict is the “largest privacy verdict in history”.

Edelson PC pursued headline-grabbing privacy suits in 2018 — suing Uber over a data breach, assisting a state regulator in a case against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and winning class certification in a case claiming Facebook violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act — landing it among Law360’s Cybersecurity & Privacy Groups of the Year.

Edelson PC was awarded class certification in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against one of the most prominent youth volleyball clubs in the country for concealing and failing to disclose the club owner’s alleged sexual abuse of underage players.

Rafey S. Balabanian is the managing partner and general counsel at Edelson PC. He graduated with distinction with a degree in history from the University of Colorado, Boulder and earned his J.D. from the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. Rafey is a trial lawyer who handles class and mass actions, as well as complex commercial and business litigation.

Edelson PC hosted a seminar for over 40 south suburban Cook County high school students in preparation for the Illinois State Bar Association's High School Mock Trial Invitational. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx spoke at the event.

Edelson PC defended consumers against everything from unwanted robocalls to nosy sex toys over the last year, with more than $130 million in settlements demonstrating why the firm was named among Law360's Consumer Protection Practice Groups of the Year.

Tackling some of the newest and most perilous legal risks, these law firms are defining and protecting life in the information age.

Asserting Congress and local governments either aren't doing enough or lack the resources to address the so-called opioid epidemic impacting communities of all kinds and sizes, the only way to effectively fund treatment and solutions is through litigation, a Chicago class-action attorney said.

The litigation coming out of the opioid crisis will rival the tobacco suits of the 1990s, Jay Edelson of plaintiffs firm Edelson PC told an audience during a Chicago City Club panel on the drugs and possible solutions to the epidemic of addiction.

The City of Chicago and Cook County tapped privacy lawyer Jay Edelson to serve as special prosecuting counsel in case against Uber over revelations that the company attempted to cover up a 2016 data breach that exposed personal information of 57 million people.

Jay Edelson, a Chicago lawyer who was the first of several Wednesday to present his leadership proposal to the judges, said afterward that the nearly five-hour session stood out in terms of productivity. The vetting hearings are usually spent with lawyers touting their credentials, but in this instance he said the court cut to the chase.

Kris Kobach calls the program a model for the country. It has major security problems.

For anyone who feels powerless about controlling their personal information in a world of search engines and public databases, take heart. A recent court ruling suggests you might have more muscle than you thought.

Class action alleges that thousands of donors have been misled by PayPal Giving Fund, and that their gifts never reached the intended charities.

One of the most expansive bills to target class actions in the past decade quietly passed through the House Judiciary Committee this week, prompting plaintiffs attorneys, civil rights groups and consumer advocates to spring into action.

With a track record of winning cases against some of the country’s biggest tech companies, and expanding liability for data privacy blunders in the process, Edelson is a difficult lawyer to bet against.

A federal judge on Friday unveiled a long sealed proposed class-action complaint that accused the law firm, Johnson & Bell, of failing to take adequate steps to protect the data on its servers.

Retail clothier failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit and has been stuck with a bill for $58,000 for its opponents’ legal costs, as the federal judge sent the case back to Cook County for further proceedings.

Edelson files suit against notorious class action objectors alleging that they are engaging in an ongoing scheme to extort class action lawyers via frivolous objections to proposed settlements.

Jay Edelson is now one of best-known lawyers in the field, in part because of his aggressive pursuit of giant tech firms and their uses of consumer data.

The FCC and our judicial system have provided a comprehensive process to update the TCPA and keep it current with ever changing technology. Any changes at the congressional level should be done carefully and in a nuanced fashion to avoid opening sought-after loopholes that have unintended consequences.

Months after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling said those who bring lawsuits must show a "concrete and particularized" harm, the plaintiffs attorneys involved have defeated a defense attempting to use that ruling in another case. A judge ruled this month that providing personally identifiable information to a third party obtained from app users' viewing data can cause the users harm.

A Chicago-area woman is suing the maker of We-Vibe, claiming the smartphone-enabled personal massager secretly transmitted "highly intimate and sensitive data" of her usage to the company in real time. The lawsuit, filed this month in a Chicago federal court, seeks class-action status for "tens of thousands" of We-Vibe users, whose data allegedly was collected without consent by Standard Innovation, the device's Canadian manufacturer, in violation of privacy and consumer fraud laws.

Attorneys litigating a massive class action accusing several cruise marketing companies of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by robocalling millions of Americans with offers for free trips told an Illinois federal judge overseeing the case Thursday that they had reached a settlement that could see the companies paying out up to $76 million.

A Massachusetts federal judge won't let USA Today parent company Gannett Co. off the hook for allegedly collecting app users' video viewing data and sharing it with another company, ruling on Friday that disclosing personally identifiable information could indeed cause users harm.

That’s the claim that lawyers at Edelson P.C. have made in a suit filed in San Francisco federal court on Monday against the San Francisco Bay Area’s National Basketball Association franchise and two companies that helped the team build its mobile app.

A Q&A with Jay Edelson of Edelson PC Hacking incidents at law firms have led to major data breach events in recent months. Even as all law firms store and handle sensitive client data, many of the smaller organizations tend to lack robust cybersecurity policies and procedures.

"Jay Edelson is the founder & CEO of 50-employee Chicago-based Edelson PC. Picture a stereotypical startup – workers scurrying about on hover boards throughout an open office, playing ping-pong, making music videos to team-build, playing around with the Oculus Rift, wearing flip-flops and short or jeans and hoodies as weather-appropriate, being entrepreneurial at every turn – and that’s Edelson . . . ."

"For a Biglaw player, there’s really no excuse at this point for lagging behind the market in compensation. It’s just throwing up a white flag to be hemming and hawing about compensation — at least in the top markets — at this point. . . ."  

"Your company has likely spent a lot of time, effort, and money keeping its security systems, policies, and practices up to date. Can the same be said of your law firm?

The legal industry isn't exactly known for its technology leadership, which should be of concern, especially from a security perspective. Don't assume that your data is safe, in other words. Be prepared to do your own due diligence. . . ."

"In Spokeo v. Robins, in which we represented the plaintiff, Spokeo Inc. made the unprecedented argument to the U.S. Supreme Court that to establish "injury in fact" standing in statutory cases, the plaintiff must allege "real-world" or "palpable" harm beyond the statutory violation. Not only did Spokeo's argument fail to secure five votes, it didn't garner any. . . ."

"The Biometric Information Privacy Act of Illinois is not a law many are familiar with. But if you have ever shared a photo on social media, the little-known statute turns out to be one of the nation’s toughest regulations for how companies like Facebook and Google can use facial recognition technologies to identify you online. . . ."

"The issues for the general election campaign have, to a great extent, already been framed. And Donald Trump, being the world-class marketer he is, has successfully forced a debate about whether the U.S. needs to build a wall across the 1,954 miles of our southern border to secure our great nation. . . ."

"Silicon Valley purports to hate the legal system. To hear the tech world tell it, lawyers are leeches and regulations are mostly outdated. Lawsuits stifle innovation and waste money that startups could better spend developing products and recruiting more users, thereby making the world a better place. . . ."

Several former college football players filed class-action lawsuits Tuesday against their universities, conferences and the N.C.A.A., claiming negligence over their handling of head injuries. The spate of cases — six were filed Tuesday — marks a new effort by athletes seeking financial relief for what they say are the lasting effects from concussions sustained in their college careers. . . .

The US Supreme Court kicked a contentious privacy lawsuit back to a lower court on Monday, essentially telling the 9th US District Court of Appeals it hadn't answered all the necessary questions when ruling that people search engine Spokeo had harmed a user by displaying inaccurate information. . . .

Edelson PC announces it has filed a federal class-action under seal that targets a Chicago-based regional law firm for data security holes, and that it's moving the Court to unseal the complaint against the unnamed firm. . . .

"Theranos, the health technology company once valued at $9 billion, is making its investors’ blood run cold... While the rise and fall of Theranos has been dramatic, it is far from a rare case. . . ."

Silicon Valley hates privacy laws. And it's no surprise why. Companies like Facebook, Google and Instagram succeed by collecting and monetizing consumer data . . .

Much of the discussion around the release of Kanye West's The Life of Pablo album has centered around its ground-breaking nature and constantly evolving musical updates, but underneath the art a different story has been unfolding. . . .

He’s seen Silicon Valley’s vision for the future, and it’s enough to keep him awake at night. If the tech wizards get their way, says Chicago attorney Jay Edelson, we will soon be living in a world of total interconnectivity. . . .

As big law firms come to grips with the need to defend against cyberattacks, some may not be doing enough to address a potential blind spot: other law firms. . . .

Reports on Wednesday that both Weil Gotshal & Manges and Cravath, Swaine & Moore as well as other firms have suffered data breaches in recent months, put new attention on the potential consequences for law firms with lax security.

“We’ve been saying for a long time that law firms are major targets,” said Jay Edelson, founder of Edelson, a plaintiff’s side class-action firm that focuses on privacy-related suits. . . .

On Monday, the Justice Department dropped its case against Apple after it was able to unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook, with the help of an "outside party." Now, Apple wants to know just how they did it. . . .

When a public interest group wants to create new legal precedent, its first step is to find a client with sympathetic facts. But the public may not realize that the government employs this legal tactic as well. . . .

A diverse group of civil liberties advocates come together to battle data vampires, little known corporate entities that gather and manipulate people's personal information in an effort to influence consumer behavior with startling specificity. . . .

For the past decade I've spent my professional life fighting tech giants over consumer privacy issues. I've been called Silicon Valley's "most feared and loathed" attorney, "tech's baby-faced boogeyman" and — my personal favorite — a "leech tarted up as a freedom fighter." Given that, I never thought I would be standing with Apple in a high-stakes privacy battle. . . .

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez seemed to leave open the possibility companies could pay off the representative plaintiff in a class action and thus stop the larger lawsuit before it begins...

Even if a defendant company convinces a judge to accept payment on behalf of a plaintiff who doesn’t want it, attorney Jay Edelson with Edelson PC in Chicago said the strategy ultimately is doomed to fail. . . .

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rightly rejected Campbell-Ewald Co.’s attempt to settle out plaintiff Jose Gomez’s individual claim to, in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words, “avoid a potential adverse decision, one that would expose it to damages a thousand-fold larger than the bid Gomez declined to accept.” . . .

The mall is crowded, including the department store that keeps your family supplied with everything from handbags to business suits. Moments after you enter, a saleswoman walks up holding a tablet. She smiles and greets you by name. Are you shopping for yourself or your spouse today? We’ve moved things around since you were here in December—let me help you find your way, she says. . . .

Plaintiffs class action firm and privacy litigation heavyweight Edelson PC revealed Tuesday that it has set up shop in San Francisco, a move that the Chicago-based firm said would allow it to file more suits and put more pressure on Silicon Valley companies. . . .

Edelson PC, the Chicago-based plaintiffs firm that specializes in privacy litigation, will open its second office Tuesday in San Francisco. The new South of Market digs will put Edelson closer to key federal courts—and to the technology companies the firm frequently torments with class actions. . . .

The Supreme Court is set to hear a clash between privacy laws that protect American consumers and the desire of online data providers to avoid potentially crippling lawsuits if they post inaccurate information on the Web. . . .

Thomas Robins says the online profile he found under his name six years ago bore little resemblance to his real self...

That dossier, compiled by the data broker Spokeo Inc., is now at the center of what may be the biggest business case of the U.S. Supreme Court’s nine-month term. . . .

On Wednesday, the Washington Post introduced the world to the forthcoming app Peeple, which will let people publicly post ratings about other people.

Since then, the concept of a Yelp-for-people has proven almost universally unpopular with observers, who are warning that Peeple will inevitably lead to abuse. . . .

On Wednesday, the Washington Post introduced the world to the forthcoming app Peeple, which will let people publicly post ratings about other people.

Since then, the concept of a Yelp-for-people has proven almost universally unpopular with observers, who are warning that Peeple will inevitably lead to abuse. . . .

Joining a roster of privacy advocates, the Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to rule that consumers have the right to sue data aggregators for posting incorrect information online. . . .

Today is one of those days when I am really glad not to be a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. They only get the tough cases. . . .

Just after sunrise on August 1st, Tokyo police stormed into a sleek two-story townhouse on a quiet residential street in Japan's capital and arrested Mark Karpeles, the 30-year-old head of Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange in the world. . . .

The next time Edelson P.C. takes a tech foe to court, the firm will have a former cybercrime prosecutor on its side. . . .

A Chicago law firm known for suing Facebook, Google and other tech giants is expanding its roster of lawyers by nearly half to tackle a booming caseload. . . .

Three suits accuse its tagging feature of violating an Illinois law that carries hefty statutory penalties. . . .

Marketers who use text messages and automated phone calls are fretting that the Federal Communications Commission's recent order interpreting the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) will hurt consumers more than it will help them. Two trade associations have filed petitions in appeals court challenging the ruling, and corporate defense attorneys fear an increase in class action lawsuits. . . .

Facebook’s handling of your headshot is now the subject of class action lawsuits that pose the question: When someone turns your mug into data, are those digits theirs or yours? . . .

It would have been shocking if big business hadn’t turned out in force to back the search engine Spokeo at the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case with potentially huge consequences for class action defendants. . . .

Discussions between privacy advocates and tech companies about facial recognition technology have broken down. The industry would not commit itself to obtaining users' consent before collecting their biometric data. . . .

Privacy advocates and representatives from companies like Facebook and Google are meeting in Washington on Thursday to try to set rules for how companies should use this powerful technology. They may be forgetting that a good deal of it could already be illegal. . . .

Lax security for the growing number of appliances, televisions, cars and other everyday items connected to the Internet will prompt a wave of litigation in coming years, some lawyers have predicted. . . .

The lead plaintiff in the NCAA’s concussion lawsuit says he never agreed to a preliminary settlement before a federal judge and has fired his lawyer, according to a statement released Tuesday by the National College Players Association. . . .

A panel of national data-security attorneys agreed at a cybersecurity conference Tuesday that data breach litigation is expanding in almost every way, and big changes are coming soon. . . .

A law firm’s summer associate program can be a great way for both firms and attorneys-in-training to figure out whether they have a future together, but it's still easy to be wrong.

Law firms will soon be struggling to find top talent in the avalanche of resumes they receive for summer associate positions, but law firms first need to ask some tough questions of themselves, experts say. . . .

It just goes to show the importance of jurisdiction. Recently, the Supreme Court added a new case to its docket for next year, Spokeo v. Robins, which is about a technical question of jurisdiction — when a plaintiff has “standing” to sue in federal court. . . .

A federal judge's recent approval of the NFL's concussion settlement demonstrates why the NCAA's proposed concussion deal “falls far outside the range of possible approval,” lawyers for a former San Diego State football player claim. . . .

The U.S. Supreme Court last month granted a request from Spokeo, a data aggregator, to consider whether the legal basis litigants must meet to file a claim in federal court should be broadly or narrowly defined. . . .

Attorneys representing college athletes in a concussion lawsuit against the NCAA have criticized a proposed settlement. . . .

Trial lawyers have built an empire chasing the potentially injured and convincing them to sue. But what if a multimillion-dollar lawsuit required no injury at all? . . .

Have you ever uploaded pictures onto Facebook and found that the site has automatically identified the people in each image, asking if you’d like to tag them?

This “tag suggestion” feature comes courtesy of the site’s facial recognition software, added in 2010, which a class-action lawsuit filed April 1 says violates users’ privacy. . . .

When technology executives imagine the boogeyman, they see a baby-face guy in wire-rim glasses. His name is Jay Edelson.

While working as a defense attorney in the late 1990s, Jay Edelson realized something was missing. So he built a plaintiffs' firm that offered just what he was craving. . . .

Last month the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section of Legal Education Standards Review Committee recommended that the organization reverse its policy forbidding law students from being paid to participate in for-credit externships. That’s good news both for law students and our profession as a whole. . . .

Customers of Mt. Gox are trying to freeze assets in the United States of the bankrupt Bitcoin exchange and its chief executive, Mark Karpeles. There’s just one problem: They don’t know where those assets are.

Plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed a motion on Tuesday seeking a temporary injunction to keep Mr. Karpeles or his company from moving any money outside of the United States. . . .

Currently, all of the big firms tend to compete for the same few thousand candidates: second-years at top-tier law schools with strong grades and enough social skills to survive the interview process. But once you step outside of this echelon of the law school hierarchy, the reality is grim. . . .

Today, we address another area in which lawyers and law firms have struggled to advance: measurability. Specifically, we’re talking about measuring the probability of success or failure (however those terms are defined) to assist in rendering legal advice to clients. . . .

Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, we discussed the not-so-novel proposition that the U.S. legal education system requires a healthy dose of reform... In today’s post, we take principles from CIC and apply them to legal scholarship. . . .

The orange tape lining the floor of Edelson LLC’s main lobby area is designed to mimic the lines on a tennis court — except it wraps up along a wall and part of the ceiling. The aesthetic is not accidental. . . .

Talk has been swirling for a while about the need to overhaul the legal education system. JD candidates crossing the stage in recent years have exited with a hefty tab and a degree that guarantees few job opportunities. And despite almost a decade of excess supply, some are claiming that law schools are running out of cash. . . .

The legal industry has been painfully slow to embrace change. While all around us industries re-invent themselves to reflect the times, our complexion is largely the same as it was 15 years ago . . .

Jay Edelson is the founder and managing partner of Edelson LLC, a national consumer class action firm. Edelson LLC focuses on consumer technology, privacy, and banking litigation, and has secured settlements valued at over $1 billion in the last five years. . . .

 

Today’s typical summer associate program is a creature of the decades-old traditional law practice. Not unlike other aspects of that tradition, while it was born out of well meaning principles (most significantly: “attract the best and the brightest”), it has now lost its way. . . .

Edelson McGuire’s space in Chicago might just be the coolest law office ever. A compliment to the firm’s website, the Chicago office has helped brand the boutique as an emerging leader in high-stakes technology class actions, privacy suits, and other national litigation. Taking up the entire 13th floor in a building just North of the river, if someone didn’t tell you it was a law firm you’d think they were busily coming up with the next big website or app…. [T]he office’s exposed ceilings (complete with industrial vents and piping) contrast with the hi-tech look of the office walls to provide an unmistakable start-up feel all their own.

A Chicago homeowner who was denied participation in a federal mortgage modification program can sue her lender for fraud and other claims, a federal appellate court said this week. . . .

"Dealing with consumer class actions is one of the more significant challenges facing companies today. Innovation moves light years faster than changes in the law. . ."

Law firms are notoriously bad at training newly-minted attorneys and developing them into meaningful contributors.The problem begins with structure. . . .