Sixth Circuit

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The United States Supreme Court has just agreed to hear the case of a Detroit man who was sentenced to 116 years in prison after data from his own cellular phone was used against him at his trial for his role in a string of robberies of Radio Shacks and T-Mobile stores in metro Detroit and Ohio over a two-year period.

Timothy Ivory Carpenter, who was sentenced in 2014 in U.S. District Court, was alleged to have organized the robberies and cell phone data obtained without a warrant from his provider was presented at his trial that indicated, according to an expert witness, that he was in the vicinity of the robberies when they occurred.

On appeal, Carpenter and another defendant, both of whom were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, argued that data revealing the locations of their cell phones supplied to investigators by wireless carriers should have been excluded from trial. They argued that because those records were created for the purpose of determining the costs of their cell phone bills, collecting that data violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Mobile Phone Privacy Case

On October 12, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied a petition for an en banc rehearing of its September 12 decision in Galaria, et al. v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (Nos. 15-3386/3387). In that decision, a divided Sixth Circuit panel revived a suit against Nationwide arising from the 2012 theft by hackers of personal information of approximately 1.1 million individuals.

In Galaria, the plaintiffs brought claims alleging invasion of privacy, negligence, bailment, and statutory violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) following the breach. The complaint alleged that the defendant failed to secure the plaintiffs’ data against a breach. A federal district court dismissed those claims, holding in part that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing because they failed to allege a cognizable injury in fact. To establish standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, a plaintiff must suffer an injury in fact, fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged conduct, that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.Continue Reading Sixth Circuit: Substantial Risk of Harm and Mitigation Costs Sufficient to Confer Standing in Data Breach Case