Providing accurate, timely, and insightful legal commentary
Connectiuct Business Litigation Blog
Commentary on lawsuits and legal issues impacting Connecticut businesses. Authored by experienced business litigation attorney, Kane Bennett of Aeton Law Partners, LLP.
Technology Tips For Connecticut Businesses To Avoid Litigation
As part of this Blog, I am going to regularly post technology tips for any Connecticut business to manage risks and avoid lawsuits. These tips will be based on a presentation I did for the Hartford Business Journal’s Etechnology Summit concerning technology bombs that can sink a business. Here’s todays tip for Connecticut businesses to avoid financial loss as a result of datal loss and security breaches. Implement a Data Loss Policy and Solution Any business that stores third party information or personal indentifiers (credit card information, social security numbers) on its computer systems faces potential exposure under a host of privacy laws. For a good resource on privacy laws go to the Privacy Law Blog by Proskauer Rose LLP. For an example of a new privacy law in Connecticut, consider the“Act Concerning the Confidentiality of Social Security Numbers.” Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act could also be implicated in a data loss case. Data loss or a security breach can cause a huge financial problem, bad public realtions, and signficant down time. Consider the recent case of TJX reported on by Sheri Qaulters for the National Law Journal. Discount retailer TJX had a data breach involving exposure of 45 million credit and debit cards. TJX entered into various settlements including payment of $9.75 million to 41 states; $30 to every consumer who used a credit or debit card; and an undisclosed settlement with three banks. Ouch. TJX is an extreme example, but data loss can sink a small to medium sized business. How can a business mimize its exposure to lawsuits from data loss or security breach? Implement a data loss
Social Networking Lawsuits Are Big Risk to Business
I just read an excellent article posted on Law.com from the New York Law Journal on social networking and challenges to business owners and their legal counsel. The authors Christopher Boehning and Daniel Toal focus on a new emerging problems associated with electronic discovery of social networking data. The authors also point out many of the potential problems for employers and businesses related to social networking sites. When Facebook started exploding in popularity, you could see that the future in communication was social networking. Boehning and Toal cite to a New York Times articles that indicates the future is now upon us as more people spend time on social networking sites than e-mailing. The authors correctly point out something I emphasize to all my business clients: businesses need to have a policy on how to handle social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. The policy should cover the business’ use of such sites and use by employees. Policies on preservation of the data should also be included as social networking data is akin to the new email. Lawsuits involving some aspect of social networking sites are increasing in frequency from across the country. Take for example the recent jury verdict in New Jersey against Hillstone Restaurant for violation of the Federal Stored Communications Act. In that case, the employers accessed an employee MySpace group that was dedicated to criticizing the employer. Although the verdict amount was relatively small, the implications are far reaching. This case was reported on by Charles Toutant in the New Jersey Law Journal.
About CTBL
Connecticut Business Litigation is the most well-read litigation blog in the state of Connecticut. Founded by Attorney Kane Bennett in 2009, a pioneer in Attorney Marketing in the state of connecticut