“Where did you go to high school?” is a peculiar St. Louis question that perplexes newcomers to the area. For the insurance savvy traveler here, a new question may replace it: “Where do you garage this vehicle that you propose to carry me and others for compensation or a fee?”
That sort of question may gain relevance due to the introduction of two new transportation networking companies in cities across the country, Uber and Lyft. These two companies offer mobile applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices that connect consumers to drivers in select cities ...
A New York trial judge’s recent decision in Zurich American Insurance v. Sony Corporation of America has set the legal blogosphere aflutter with arguments and counter-arguments as to whether cyber liability and data breach claims fall within the “Personal and Advertising Injury Liability” coverage section (Coverage B) afforded by most commercial general liability (CGL) policies. A new set of data breach exclusionary endorsements, however, filed in many jurisdictions by Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO) and set to take effect this month, May 2014, appear poised to ...
In Sandifer et al. v. U.S. Steel Corp., No. 12-417 (Jan. 27, 2014), a unanimous Supreme Court recently affirmed a grant of summary judgment in favor of U.S. Steel Corp. (“Defendant”). The Court held that time spent by Plaintiffs, former and current employees of Defendant’s steelmaking facilities, donning and doffing protective gear at the beginning and end of each workday was not compensable under a collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) between Defendant and Plaintiffs’ union. This holding was based on the Court’s finding that Plaintiffs’ donning and doffing ...
On April 9, 2014, the Seventh Circuit issued its opinion in Johnson v. Pushpin Holdings, LLC, No. 14-8006 (7th Cir. April 9, 2014). In Pushpin, the Seventh Circuit held that before a class is certified, a statement by the named plaintiff in the complaint does not limit the amount of potential damages that the class would be able to recover and, therefore, that named plaintiff could not thereby avoid removal under the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”) by indicating that the complaint sought less than $5 million. In so ruling, the Seventh Circuit followed the binding precedent set by ...
The qualifications for a clerkship with a federal circuit judge are steep: high class ranking from a top law school, significant law review experience, recommendations from well-respected faculty, etc. Now another qualification may be added to that list: the ability to don and doff poultry sanitary gear in less than two minutes.
Such was the “experiment” performed by court staff at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to help decide a case styled Mitchell v. JCG Industries, Inc. The majority opinion in that case, written by Judge Posner and joined by Judge ...
On March 18, 2014, District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr. issued a Memorandum and Order dismissing the former Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Patriot Coal Corporation in a stock drop securities class action filed in the Eastern District of Missouri. Glenn E. Davis, Partner in HeplerBroom LLC’s St. Louis office assisted Sidley Austin LLP with the decisive analysis and briefing under the Securities Exchange Act and Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (“PSLRA”).
The Court found that the defendants lacked scienter to sustain federal securities ...
"Hello, Mr. Jones. Did you just try to make a $10,000 jewelry purchase in Brazil?" To put it mildly, that is not the type of question that want your customers-- or as an insurance company, the customers of your policyholder-- to receive. All too often, however, despite the best security efforts, data breaches of sensitive personal information, like credit card data, do occur.
The insurance industry sells a variety of differing products designed specifically to provide coverage for these types of claims and losses. But, would liability for such a data breach be covered by the backbone of ...
Free Speech Trumps Conversational Privacy
In a recent pair of decisions, the Supreme Court of Illinois resolved the tension between freedom of speech and privacy in favor of freedom of speech. In People v. Clark, 2014 IL 115776 the Court held that Illinois’ eavesdropping statute was so overbroad it violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, thus finding the statute unconstitutional. And, in People v. Melongo, 2014 IL 114852, the Court held that the eavesdropping statute’s prohibition on publishing any information obtained through an “eavesdropping ...
Supreme Court Refuses to Review Consumer Appliance Defect Class Actions
Critics of the Supreme Court as consistently “pro-business” welcomed the Court’s February 24, 2014 order denying certiorari in a series of consumer class action cases alleging defects in millions of front loading washing machines. A pair of recent Sixth Circuit and Seventh Circuit decisions, and a 2012 Ninth Circuit decision permitted the class actions to proceed, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s recent Comcast decision, over the objections of Whirlpool Corp., Sears Holdings Corp., and a unit ...
Klehr v. Illinois Farmers Ins. Co., No. 121843, 1st Dist. No. 1-12-1843
The plaintiff was a passenger in a car hit by an uninsured driver. She suffered substantial injuries. And, the driver of the car in which the plaintiff rode was underinsured. Thus, her medical costs were not fully covered by insurance from either of the drivers of the vehicles in the collision.
In 2007, the plaintiff (“insured”) filed a claim for the remainder of the costs under her personal insurance policy issued by the defendant insurer. She also invoked the policy’s arbitration clause to adjudicate the ...
