Wireless providers including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon have faced a string of lawsuits in recent years from women who allege retail employees stole intimate images or videos from their phones while helping them with in-store data transfers.<\/p>\n
The cases are routinely dismissed when the companies argue they weren\u2019t aware of the staffer\u2019s actions and aren\u2019t liable because the employees were acting outside the scope of their duties. But that could soon change after a recent court ruling, legal experts told CNBC.<\/p>\n
Now, the companies \u2014 not just the store workers \u2014 could face liability in future litigation, which could lead them to address the hiring, training and data safety practices that victims argue led to the violations, the experts said.<\/p>\n
The latest lawsuit against AT&T was filed Monday in California state court. A woman identified as Jane Doe alleged that an employee at a Los Angeles store stole her nude images and distributed them in February after she upgraded her iPhone and he helped her with transferring her data.<\/p>\n
That case, filed by attorneys from the C.A. Goldberg law firm, now has a better chance of surviving and making it to trial after an April court ruling against T-Mobile involving a similar incident in Washington that was brought by the same law firm. Judge Stanley Bastian, the judge overseeing the T-Mobile case, ruled it could move forward after the company sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. <\/p>\n
T-Mobile, like other phone carriers, had argued it wasn\u2019t aware of the employee\u2019s actions and said he was acting outside the scope of his duties. But the judge decided the company could potentially be liable and ruled the case should proceed.<\/p>\n
The ruling, described by the law firm as a \u201clandmark\u201d decision, <\/strong>is the first of its kind against a wireless carrier accused of negligence for hiring employees alleged to have stolen sensitive customer data, the firm said. It could affect the fate of future cases, including the lawsuit filed against AT&T on Monday, legal experts said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat decision sets important precedent and we intend to continue to try to hold phone companies accountable for situations like this where their employees violate customer privacy during phone trade-ins or other transactions at the stores,\u201d said Laura Hecht-Felella from C.A. Goldberg, one of the lead attorneys behind both the T-Mobile and the new AT&T case. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of different ways in which they can try to prevent this from happening and it\u2019s clear whatever they\u2019re currently doing is not adequate.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrie Goldberg, the firm\u2019s founder, added that the \u201chope really is not to attract more cases\u201d but to encourage the companies to have better safeguards in place. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what litigation does. It says you can be held responsible for your negligence,\u201d said Goldberg. \u201cAnd presumably that will induce the phone companies to innovate on their safety and privacy protections for consumers at their stores.\u201d <\/p>\n AT&T did not immediately respond to a request to comment. T-Mobile declined to comment.<\/p>\n In the case against AT&T, the woman filed a police report, which remains under investigation, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n At least six other similar accusations have been levied against AT&T in the past either in civil lawsuits or police reports, according to the complaint. The dispositions of those cases are unclear. The cases mirror at least a dozen more alleged to have happened at other providers, such as T-Mobile and Verizon, according to news reports. <\/p>\n Goldberg says she suspects the cases that have been made public are \u201cjust the tip of the iceberg,\u201d and there are likely more that customers never detected. <\/p>\n \u201cWe suspect that the phenomenon of theft at cellular phone stores is bigger than we can comprehend,\u201d said Goldberg. <\/p>\n \u201cAs a society, we trust these cellular providers with all of our most private information,\u201d said Goldberg. \u201cAnd really there\u2019s no limit to what their employees can steal off of our phones and then share with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that her firm has received \u201ccase after case after case\u201d where customers allege phone store employees stole their data. Goldberg said the issue cuts across companies, making it an \u201cindustry-wide\u201d concern. <\/p>\n Andrew Stengel, a New York attorney who specializes in cases involving the nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images, better known as revenge porn, reviewed the T-Mobile Washington decision for CNBC. He said future cases, such as the AT&T lawsuit, now have a better chance of surviving motions to dismiss and progressing because the attorneys will be able to point to that precedent in their arguments. <\/p>\n \u201cIt should make judges think twice or three times before they dismiss a claim,\u201d said Stengel, who has brought a similar case against T-Mobile in the past but isn\u2019t involved in the current litigation. \u201cIt should be able to give judges not only pause, but ammunition to agree.\u201d <\/p>\n If lawsuits against wireless carriers related to the theft of intimate images are allowed to proceed, they move into discovery, which Stengel likened to the \u201ccrown jewels\u201d of a legal case. <\/p>\n During discovery, defendants are required to turn over documents that are relevant to the case, which could reveal damning and implicating information. <\/p>\n \u201cThere could be information that the cell phone companies would be required to disclose that will increase liability in the future,\u201d said Stengel. \u201cIf I were their attorney, I\u2019d be very concerned about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Stengel cautioned that while the Washington decision may be \u201cexciting,\u201d it\u2019s not binding and judges in other jurisdictions can choose to ignore it. <\/p>\n Still, Goldberg expects the decision to be \u201cinfluential.\u201d She said it could impel phone companies to finally make changes to prevent these sorts of abuses. <\/p>\n \u201cWe think that the cellular providers are going to be a lot less arrogant about what they can get away with,\u201d said Goldberg. \u201cIf you\u2019re a company that is consistently hiring rando pervs that steal consumers\u2019 most private, intimate pictures, then, it\u2019s the company\u2019s fault.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wireless providers including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon have faced a string of lawsuits in recent years from women who allege…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}