General Data Protection Regulation

Subscribe to General Data Protection Regulation

The European Union’s (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) turned one year old on May 25th. European data protection regulators celebrated by continuing to work through a rising number of complaints and infractions, and by stepping up their monitoring for violations. US companies are directly in the crosshairs. Whether based in the EU or not, a company is potentially subject to the GDPR (and its stiff fines up to 4% of annual global revenue) if it offers goods or services to data subjects located in the EU, or monitors individuals’ online behavior or personal information in the EU. This means that a US company engaged in the common business practice of collecting data from its EU customers must assess and implement business practices to ensure GDPR compliance.

The US and EU engaged in approximately $1.3 trillion dollars in trade last year. With that level of economic activity, and accompanying data flows, many US companies should already have in place the basic structures for GDPR compliance. However, recent surveys suggest that a significant number of companies impacted by the GDPR are still grappling with compliance. In a recent Forrester Research study, “Security Through Simplicity,” over half of the responding IT decision-makers revealed that their companies had not yet carried out even basic GDPR compliance steps such as vetting third-party vendors, hiring data protection officers, training employees, setting up mechanisms for the “72-hour data breach notification” requirement, and collecting evidence and documenting efforts to address GDPR compliance risks. Further, only about 4,650 US companies are currently registered and self-certified with the EU-US Privacy Shield framework (compared to the over 100,000 mid- to large-sized companies in the US, according to business census data). Such certification goes a long way toward permitting a US company to receive certain EU data in a GDPR compliant manner.Continue Reading At the GDPR’s First Anniversary, the Impact on US Companies Grows

The European Commission has recently released a new website providing guidance on the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) implementation requirements.  The website provides a plethora of resources both to industry looking to become compliant with GDPR standards as well as to citizens looking to understand their data protection rights.  Highlights of the website include a …

Kansas Judge Rules that Class Action over CareCentrix Data Breach may Proceed

On December 19, 2016, in Hapka v. Carecentrix, the United States District Court for the District of Kansas denied CareCentrix, Inc.’s (CareCentrix) motion to dismiss a class action suit arising from a data breach affecting CareCentrix’s personal and tax information regarding thousands of employees.  The Court found that plaintiff Sarah Hapka, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, met the Article III standing requirements and sufficiently alleged a claim upon which relief could be granted.

Hapka claimed that in February 2016, an unauthorized person posed as one of CareCentrix’s employees and emailed a request for current and former employees’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Wage and Tax Statements (W-2 Forms). One of CareCentrix’s employees complied with the request, providing the W-2 Forms which included employees’ names, addresses, birth dates, wages, and Social Security Numbers.  Hapka alleged that shortly after this data breach, she received a letter from the IRS indicating that someone filed a fraudulent tax return in her name.  She later brought the underlying putative class action claiming that CareCentrix negligently permitted the data breach and that she and the class of plaintiffs will suffer imminent and certain impending injury of fraud and identity theft.

CareCentrix conceded that Hapka suffered some form of actual, concrete injury due to the filing of a false tax return. However, it argued that the other allegations of injury—the impending costs of countering the current tax fraud and heightened risk for future identify theft—are too speculative to meet the Article III standing bar set by the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, which required plaintiffs to show an invasion of a legally protected interest and allege a concrete injury.  The Court rejected CareCentrix’s attempt to look at the plaintiff’s alleged injuries in a vacuum, stating that “[t]he fact that her stolen information has been used once has a direct impact on the plausibility of future harm.” Although the Court acknowledged that federal courts have disagreed about whether an alleged increased risk of identity theft is a sufficient injury to meet standing requirements, it followed the line of cases finding standing because the plaintiffs suffered from identity theft after a data breach.  Ultimately, the Court held that the plaintiffs met standing requirements.

The Court further rejected CareCentrix’s claim that Hapka failed to adequately plead the negligence claim because it did not have a statutory duty of care regarding employee information, and that plaintiff failed to allege any common-law duty. The Court found that identification of a statutory duty was unnecessary, and that the allegations that the harm was foreseeable established a common-law duty to exercise reasonable care.

This case further highlights how the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo earlier this year has produced varied results in breach litigation.  The Kansas Court acknowledged the split among federal courts on standing requirements, but effectively avoided ruling on the issue since Hapka actually suffered injury due to the filing of a false tax return.  If the plaintiffs did not have this example demonstrating that a concrete injury had in fact occurred, it is questionable whether the Kansas Court would have decided to deny CareCentrix’s dismissal motion on standing grounds.Continue Reading December 2016 Monthly Update