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The right to privacy, or “the right to be left alone” as it is sometimes called, dates back to the English common law. In the United States, the right of individual privacy in the civil law is thought to have its origins with an 1890 issue of the Harvard Law Review, written by attorney Samuel D. Warren and his law partner, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, entitled “The Right to Privacy.”
Today, in a world dominated by data giants like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, privacy rights are supposed to be protected by a complex web of state and federal laws and regulations. However, the right of consumers to control their financial data, personal history, location, internet searches, photos and other private information is increasingly in peril.
The law firm of Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C., has been relentless in protecting the privacy rights of individual consumers for over 20 years. Associated with well-known consumer privacy experts, including through the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the firm is on top of legal developments in the area of consumer privacy, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act or “CCPA,” effective January 1, 2020.
We were among the first to file suit after the 2017 Equifax data breach and the 2019 Capital One data breach, and we have contributed to ground-breaking legal ruling that protect the privacy rights of consumers.
Find out if you have a case for invasion of privacy by filling out the form on this page or call us at 1-877-735-8600 and get a FREE CASE REVIEW.
The consultation is free, there is no obligation, and if you have a case, no out-of-pocket-costs.
Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C. secured one of the first court decisions to hold that a consumer may sue a credit reporting agency that improperly disclosed the victim’s personal identifying information (“PII”) to an identity thief. Howley v. Experian Info. Solutions, Inc., 813 F. Supp. 2d 629 (D.N.J. 2011).
We also obtained one of the first court decisions to find that a consumer may proceed to a jury trial on a claim that a bank breached its duty to sufficiently secure its online banking system though multi-factor authentication. Shames-Yeakel v. Citizens Financial Bank, 677 F. Supp. 2d 994 (N.D. Ill. 2009).
The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act or “FCRA” is one of the strongest laws that protects privacy rights in the United Sates and one of our main areas of concentration. The FCRA prohibits unlawful access to private financial and other information without a “permissible purpose.” It can be used to recover statutory, actual, and even punitive damages against privacy-violators. It also requires such violators to pay for the consumer’s attorney’s fees and costs in any successful action to establish a violation of the statute.
At any one time, Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C. has several FCRA cases that implicate privacy rights and interests. For example, we recently brought a class action lawsuit against MyLife.Com for, among other things, violating the privacy rights of consumers by placing information about their salaries, net worth, and religious affiliation on the internet without their consent. Dennis v MyLife.Com, Inc., Case No. 20-cv-00954 (D.N.J.).
