In one of the largest privacy class action suits ever filed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed a federal district court decision allowing a class action to proceed against comScore, an online data research company, for alleged violations of federal privacy statutes.1 The class, which is likely to total well over one million members, includes all individuals who have downloaded the company's software since 2005. At the heart of the complaint is plaintiff's claim that comScore's software collects more personal information about users than is disclosed in the company's terms of service and that the company sells this information to third parties, who in turn use the data for marketing research.
Historically, plaintiffs have had a difficult time showing that they have sustained damages from alleged privacy violations, and this has frustrated most attempts to bring privacy class actions. However, in comScore, the lead plaintiffs were found to have standing, and the purported class was certified, based on statutory damages, not actual damages. The comScore decision and other recent decisions allowing privacy cases to proceed in the absence of actual damages suggest that the legal landscape may be changing, and that privacy could be the next significant frontier in consumer class action litigation.
