Check out Laura Johnson’s interview with Insurance Journal on the professional liability exposures and litigation trends for technology and manufacturing companies. This interview is from the November 2008 Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) International Conference but the concepts discussed are still relevant today.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has recently launched TOSBack.org, a site for keeping track of what has changed and when for the Terms of Service (TOS) agreements of major websites.

As previously discussed, a company should not necessarily rely on implementing a change to its Terms of Service contract by simply posting the revised contract on its website; the other party to the contract, the customer, needs to be aware of the change. This principle applies even if the company puts a statement in its Terms of Service agreement warning the customer that the agreement will be changed without notice. As Eric Goldman points out on his Technology & Marketing Law blog, stating that the Terms of Service agreement can effectively be changed at any time without notice, could render the entire agreement unenforceable.

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Mass. General is facing a possible class action lawsuit because one of its employees took private patient information home for the weekend and left it on the train.

The California Department of Public Health assessed an administrative penalty of $250,000 on Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Bellflower for allowing employees and physicians unauthorized access to a patient’s medical records. The penalty was assessed under a new medical privacy provision of California’s Health and Safety Code.

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The Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) has a new blog tracking legal actions against bloggers. It’s searchable by a variety of categories. So if you’re looking for claim examples involving blogs, check it out. In the damages category, the MLRC currently tracks 17 cases totaling over $30 Million in damages awarded. Of the cases shown, the highest amount awarded by a jury involved a suit for libel over a site post about the plaintiff’s business practices. The case was settled confidentially immediately before the jury rendered its verdict of $2.5 Million in compensatory damages plus $10 Million in punitive damages. The site in question was turned over to the plaintiff.

We have been discussing the roles bloggers play as publishers and/or journalists for a while now but a new proposal from the FTC could add an additional role (or liability) for bloggers, that of advertiser.

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The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that an insurer cannot deny coverage because notice of a claim is not provided “as soon as practicable” if the late notice does not prejudice the insurer. This is a reversal of an earlier ruling made by the Texas 5^th district appellate court. While this ruling may seem advantageous for insureds, late reporting of claims is still problematic. Here’s a basic overview of how claims are analyzed:

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As previously mentioned, the majority of states currently have breach notification laws and the first state to adopt a notification law was California. Now, California has a new bill that, if passed, would require companies to provide victims with more information regarding the breach as well as notify the State if the breach affects over 500 California residents. The notification to a central governmental agency could allow for improved tracking of breach activity. But in this particular area, California is not necessarily the pack leader as other states already have requirements for providing breach notification to state enforcement agencies. As discussed at the recent Security Breach Notification seminar at Berkeley, all of these notification laws may not be working anyway, as data on security breaches continues to be unreliable. Still, as long as the notification laws are in place, companies can better afford compliance if they have insurance coverage that helps offset the cost. Many insurance markets do offer protection for breach notification costs. Look for protection that includes privacy regulatory-imposed civil fines and penalties and consider what type of private data is covered as well as what type of limit applies.