liability issues

Subscribe to liability issues via RSS

As the D.C. District Court in Wengui v. Clark Hill recently commented, “[m]alicious cyberattacks have unfortunately become a routine part of our modern digital world. So have the lawsuits that follow them….” The court’s decision in that case has added another data point to developing jurisprudence of the cyberattack landscape, specifically concerning the discoverability of post-breach forensics reports.

Millions of people across the country are waiting to get the COVID-19 vaccine.  For businesses, immunity is sought not against the virus but against liability, and, in some cases, businesses have been successful in invoking COVID-19 as a means to do so.  Recently, the Southern District of New York held that the pandemic immunized a defendant, Phillips Auctioneers LLC, from liability under its contract with the plaintiff, JN Contemporary.  Under the terms of the contract, Phillips agreed to present a painting at an auction scheduled for May 2020 and guaranteed JN that it would receive a minimum of $5 million from the sale.  Phillips’ contractual obligations, however, were subject to the contract’s force majeure provision which read as follows:

Does coverage for liability arising out of “advertising injury” include copyright infringement suits where the insured was not alleged to have engaged in advertisement? In Superior Integrated Solutions, Inc. v. Mercer Insurance Company of New Jersey, Inc., the New Jersey Appeals Court said “yes,” affirming the trial court’s granting summary judgment for an insured.

In July 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to tackle the thorny question of whether Amazon can be held liable for defective products sold by third parties on its website. The Third Circuit offered up the case in June after hearing arguments in February and concluding that it was “unable to predict based on existing case law, if and how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would apply [the law] to e-commerce businesses like Amazon.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to address this matter of first impression and decide whether Amazon faces strict liability for products purchased from third-party vendors when the product “was neither possessed nor owned by” Amazon.