Appeals Court Confirms Shine the Light Pleading Standards for Marketing Privacy

A recent decision by the Ninth Circuit to toss class action lawsuits filed under California’s “shine the light” law against magazine publishers over their use of subscribers’ information for marketing purposes seems to clear up what is necessary for plaintiffs to have success in the Golden State.

The Shine the Light law is a California statute that protects consumers from companies that collect and surreptitiously share their sensitive personal information with third parties. The law requires businesses to establish a procedure by which customers can receive an explanation of how their personal information is disclosed to third parties.

Plaintiff Charlotte Baxter had alleged in one of the class action lawsuits that when she signed up for a subscription to Rodale’s Runner’s World, she provided personal identifying information, including name, mailing address, email address and ZIP code. However, her class action lawsuit alleged that the company “shares its subscribers’ personal information… for direct marketing purposes.” The class action further argued that the publisher “fails to provide its customers with the Shine the Light disclosures, or the means through which its customers may obtain their disclosures, as required by the Act”

However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a state appeals court decision that disagreed with the class action lawsuit’s assertion that the putative classes’ personal information “had monetary value” sufficient to pursue damages on violations of the state’s Unfair Competition law because the state “does not recognize informational injury” and the publisher’s compliance was not a “benefit of the bargain.”

For the remaining claim under the Shine the Light law regarding personal identifying information, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the California Court ofAppeal that “a plaintiff must have suffered a statutory injury to have standing.”

Since Baxter had not made a request of Rodale to disclose what it had done with her information, she lacked standing to proceed with her case. The appeals court went on to say that it doubted that the state Supreme Court would rule any differently from the state’s Court of Appeals.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision regarding the Runner’s World case mirrors its opinions in two other class action lawsuits regarding Shine the Light disclosures. It came to the same conclusion regarding efforts by plaintiffs to seek statutory damages from Hearst Communications Inc. and Conde Nast Publications. In all three class action lawsuits, the plaintiffs failed to allege that they had sought disclosures from the publishers, or in the case of Baxter specifically, that she would have done so, dooming their claims according to the justices.

Charlotte Baxter is represented by Edelson PC and Sean Reis of the Reis Law Firm APC.

The Magazine Marketing Privacy Class Action Lawsuits are Charlotte Baxter v. Rodale, Inc., Case No. 12-cv-56925; Miller v. Hearst Communications, Inc., Case No.12-cv-57231; and King v. Conde Nast Publications, Case No. 12-cv-57209, all in the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.