Articles Posted in Business Litigation

This week, Equifax reported in on the costs associated with its massive data breach. As you’ll recall, the data breach exposed personal information from approximately 145 million Americans. The company’s CEO stepped down less than three weeks after the hack.

Shortly after taking over, interim CEO Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr., apologized and promised consumers a new credit monitoring tool in 2018 which will allow people to lock and unlock their Equifax credit files at will.

On a conference call on Friday, Barros apologized again and said that executives will not receive bonuses this year. On Thursday, the company announced that its third-quarter profits were down 27 percent. On top of that, it recorded $87.5 million last quarter in costs related to the breach and it expects to write down another $60 to $75 million this quarter.

If you’ve been following the case of Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo vs. Uber Technologies, Inc., you may know that it’s a bit of a horse race. Observers say it’s hard to gauge which company has the stronger claim because much of the evidence has been filed under seal. However, the judge hearing the case said last week that Uber’s “product is dissimilar” from Waymo’s.

After a series of pre-trial victories, however, Waymo just made a settlement offer that appears to indicate a growing confidence in its situation. It demanded over $1 billion in damages, an independent monitor to ensure Uber doesn’t use Waymo technology going forward, and a public apology.

Uber rejected the settlement offer as a non-starter, according to Reuters.

After a data breach that affected some 143 million U.S. consumers and a series of missteps in the aftermath, Equifax has named a new interim CEO: Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr. In an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal, Barros said he wanted to express his “sincere and total apology” that the credit reporting agency had failed to live up to expectations.

He also announced that Equifax will offer a new credit monitoring tool in the future, which should be available by Jan. 31, 2018.According to NPR, Barros wrote that “the service we are developing will let consumers easily lock and unlock access to their Equifax credit files. You will be able to do this at will. It will be reliable, safe and simple. Most significantly, the service will be offered free, for life.”

The service is meant as a response to what has been a highly embarrassing incident for the company. It is also meant to ease consumers’ worries and to disrupt cyber crime.

Authored by Paul Tennison, Summer Associate, Cole Law Group.

Disclaimer: This blog post is not legal advice. This post is intended to give a bit of background information about the affirmative defense of lack of personal jurisdiction in the State of Tennessee. Each case is different and there are tactical considerations about when to assert defenses. For legal advice applicable to your specific situation, always contact an attorney licensed in your state.

Introduction