April



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| Retail & PCI-DSS
April 24, 2018
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TopClassActions Accused of Unlawful Background Screening Processes

Petco and two job applicants are seeking preliminary approval of a $1.2 million settlement in a lawsuit claiming the company’s background check policies are unlawful.  After an almost two-year legal battle with Petco, the job applicants have reached settlement discussions with Petco for their Petco background check class action lawsuit.

The Petco class action lawsuit establishes a Class of roughly 37,279 job applicants who believe that they were subjected to Petco’s allegedly unlawful background check policies. If the proposed settlement deal goes through, a $1.2 million settlement fund will be established, from which each Class Member will receive an estimated $20.

The original claim was that Petco violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by not sufficiently notifying job applicants that the company would conduct background checks of applicants.

Allegedly, the company “buries” the background check notification in the fine print of its online application. Zimmer and Feist argue that this communication violates the FCRA, which requires companies to provide a separate document disclosing the company’s background check policy to individuals who will be subjected to background checks.

The Petco job app background check class action lawsuit was then removed to federal court in June 2016. Petco attempted to have the claims dismissed, saying that Zimmer was given notice of the company’s background check policy, and that in the class action lawsuit, Zimmer even admitted as much.

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| Manufacturing
April 17, 2018
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Background check class action lawsuit - Frito-Lay to pay $2.4m

A failure to disclose to potential employees during the hiring process that consumer credit reports were being used as part of the background checks, has resulted in a large payout by Frito-Lay.
 

Frito-Lay Inc., a subsidiary of Pepsico Inc., has agreed to pay $2.4 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that the company violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by using consumer credit reports when they conducted background checks as part of a hiring process without properly disclosing this practice to the job applicant.

Plaintiff Marcus Chism, a former Frito-Lay employee, requested preliminary approval of the settlement on Friday from a California federal judge.

This settlement will end his Frito-Lay class action lawsuit that claimed the company unlawfully failed to disclose the fact that they incorporated consumer reports into the background checks they run on job applicants.

The Frito-Lay FCRA class action lawsuit implicates Pepsico, Frito-Lay, and First Advantage Background Services Corp., the company Frito-Lay used to conduct the background checks on its employees.

The $2.4 million Frito-Lay class action settlement was reportedly reached after two mediated discussions between Chism and Frito-Lay. The two parties agreed upon a gross settlement of $62.87 per Class Member and a net settlement of at least $40. Reports show that this compensation is in line with, if not slightly higher than comparable settlements for alleged FCRA violations in the Northern District of California.

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CMS.DataEngine.CollectionPropertyWrapper`1[CMS.DataEngine.BaseInfo]
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April 17, 2018
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Microsoft's case declared moot by Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dropped Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) privacy fight with the Justice Department over whether prosecutors can force technology companies to hand over data stored overseas after Congress passed legislation that resolved the dispute.

The justices heard arguments in the high-profile case on Feb. 27, but President Donald Trump on March 22 signed legislation into law that makes clear that U.S. judges can issue warrants for such data while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law.

“No live dispute remains between the parties over the issue,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, declaring the case moot.

Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how U.S. prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by U.S. companies. The case involved Microsoft’s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a U.S. judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drug-trafficking investigation.

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