news and knowledge from around the globe compiled by Global EDD Group
Apple Inc. said Monday its iPad tablet device will be available in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore this Friday.
via The Associated Press: Apple says iPad coming to more countries Friday.
Besides a raft of personal injury suits and the economic claims against BP, a new genre of suits is now emerging: the civil racketeering suit.
Last week Daniel Becnel, Richard Arsenault and an array of other attorneys filed in the Western District of Louisiana a federal RICO suit against BP and Transocean. Click here for the complaint.
A RICO suit filed on Monday is far more narrow in focus, targeting BP’s claims process. The suit filed in the Southern District of Alabama has accused three entities — BP, a catastrophe contractor that apparently is helping BP administer claims and a property management company — of fraudulent practices in helping claimants seek recourse under funds set aside via the Oil Pollution Act.
via Hello, RICO! The Latest Headache to Hit BP – Law Blog – WSJ.
Google learned some hard security lessons after it was attacked late last year by hackers, CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday.
“Google is now particularly paranoid about that,” Schmidt said during a question-and-answer session following Googles Atmosphere 2010 conference before about 400 CIOs. After the company learned that some of its intellectual property was stolen during an attack that originated from inside China, it began locking down its systems to a greater degree and accelerated plans to move to Web-based systems like Chrome OS netbooks.
The attacks took advantage of a flaw in Internet Explorer 6 that was quickly patched, although the damage had been done. More than 30 U.S. companies were believed to be targeted by the attacks, but Google was one of the few that publicly identified itself as a victim because “we decided we had to tell people as a warning,” Schmidt said.
via Google CEO: Were now paranoid about security | Relevant Results – CNET News.
In the annals of the tort-reform movement, Monday, March 22, 2010 will probably not go down as one to be celebrated.
For starters, on Monday the world awakened to the reality of a new huge piece of legislation — the health care bill. And it’s a health-care bill without significant movement on medical-malpractice reform.
But the movement suffered another blow on Monday when the Supreme Court of Georgia struck down the state’s caps on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases. The vote was 7-0. Click here for the opinion, here for the story, from the Fulton County Daily Report.
Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein, in writing for the court, emphasized the separation of powers, that the state’s legislature had encroached on judges’ and juries’ turf. “The very existence of the caps, in any amount, is violative of the right to trial by jury,” she wrote.
The ruling follows a similar decision made last month in Illinois, in which the state’s Supreme Court held unconstitutional the state statute that placed caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Click here for a writeup on the Illinois case from Illinois-Kent law professor Ralph Brill.
via A Bad Day for Tort Reform, Georgia High Court Strikes Med-Mal Caps – Law Blog – WSJ.
The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it has uncovered widespread data breaches at companies, schools and local governments whose employees are swapping music, software and movie files over the Internet.
The consumer protection agency said it sent nearly 100 letters to organizations where information on customers and employees — including health and financial data and Social Security and driver's license numbers — leaked through peer-to-peer Web services. It warned that the security breaches could lead to identity fraud or theft, and it recommended that the groups review their policies and inform affected users.
“Unfortunately, companies and institutions of all sizes are vulnerable to serious P2P-related breaches, placing consumers' sensitive information at risk,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a news release. The agency said it has launched separate investigations of some companies as a result of its file-swapping inquiry, but it declined to name those firms or detail the scope of the probes.
“Companies should take a hard look at their systems to ensure that there are no unauthorized P2P file-sharing programs and that authorized programs are properly configured and secure,” he said.
via Federal Trade Commission links wide data breach to file sharing – washingtonpost.com.
A pair of groundbreaking rulings issued Monday by an Ontario judge in a securities class action has suddenly made the province a much more attractive jurisdiction for plaintiffs pursuing global securities litigation.
The case, filed against IMAX Corp. and several individual defendants in Toronto in the fall of 2006, is considered a litmus test for a new securities law creating U.S.-style civil liability for misrepresentations that affect stock market values.
Monday’s two-part decision permits the litigation to proceed and separately certifies a global class of investors — no small matter considering that some 80-85 percent of investors reside outside of Canada. The decision also explicitly calls the threshold for such pleadings a low one, which “will no doubt be cheered by investors, and jeered by Bay and Wall Streets,” wrote Jim Middlemiss at The Legal Post.
via Ontario Judge Certifies Global Investor Class in Landmark Decision.
Microsoft Monday said it will provide patent- and license-free use rights to the format behind its Outlook Personal Folders (known as PST files), opening e-mail, calendar, contacts, and other information to a host of applications such as antimalware or cloud-based services.
Documenting and publishing the .pst format could open up entirely new feature sets for programs such as search tools for mining mailboxes for relevant corporate data, new security tools that scan .pst data for malicious software, or e-discovery tools for meeting compliance regulations, according to Microsoft officials.
via Microsoft to let third-party apps work with Outlook’s PST files | Applications – InfoWorld.
