Martha Stewart Living Class Action Alleges Privacy Violations

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A class action lawsuit alleges that the companies behind the Martha Stewart Living magazine sold customer information without their knowledge or consent, in violation of Michigan privacy laws.

The Martha Stewart Living privacy class action lawsuit asserts that the defendants Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. and Meredith Corporation “supplement their sales and advertising revenues by secretly selling their statutorily protected information—including their full names, the title of the magazine they subscribed to, and home addresses…to data miners and other unrelated third party companies.”

In addition, the class action claims that the defendants “trade their subscribers’ Personal Reading Information with other data miners” to supplement their customer data with addition information like gender, age, and email addresses, “to increase the ‘street value’ of their customer lists and sell or trade them at a higher premium.”

The Martha Stewart class action complaint states that the data mining industry is vast, and companies frequently trade and sell customer information to each other to fuel a “$26 billion dollar per year online advertising industry in the United States.”

The complaint cites a report by the Federal Trade Commission that “data is currency” for businesses, which often share information in “database cooperatives.”

In these cooperatives, businesses pool their customer data, to try to get more information about individuals and make the data more valuable.

The Martha Stewart Living privacy class action lawsuit states that federal law, specifically the Video Privacy Protection Act, protects the video rental information of customers of “video tape service providers.”

The class action notes that Michigan law protections go further than the federal law, and seek to “preserve personal privacy with respect to the purchase, rental, or borrowing of certain materials,” such as magazines.

The Michigan law prohibits businesses from disclosing “a record or information concerning the purchase lease, rental, or borrowing of those materials by a customer that indicates the identity of the customer” to anyone except the customer.

Which is precisely what the class action complaint alleges Martha Stewart Living did to its customers.

Plaintiffs Alice Raden and Bobbie Moore each assert that they are Michigan residents who purchased a subscription to Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Though they claim they “never agreed in writing to allow Defendants to sell or disclose” their personal data, the magazine owners sold their information to data mining companies and other third parties.

Both plaintiffs contend that they received less than they paid for, and would not have purchased the magazine subscriptions had they known of defendants’ data selling practices.

Meredith Corporation recently paid $7.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit over similar allegations.

The plaintiffs in the Martha Stewart data mining lawsuit request that the Court certify a Class of “All Michigan residents who purchased a subscription to Martha Stewart Living magazine.”

Under the Michigan privacy law, the class action seeks restitution for the amount consumers were harmed or $5,000 per Class Member, whichever is greater. In addition, the complaint asks that the Court enter an order stopping the Martha Stewart Living owners from continuing to disclose customers’ private information.

The plaintiffs are represented by Ari J. Scharg and Benjamin S. Thomassen of Edelson PC; and Henry M. Scharg of the Law Office of Henry M. Scharg.

The Martha Stewart Living Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Alice Raden, et al. v. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., et al., Case No. 4:16-cv-12808, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

UPDATE: April 2019, the Michigan Martha Stewart Living magazine class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim.