Joseph J. Lazzarotti, Jason C. Gavejian and Maya Atrakchi of JacksonLewis write:
No industry or sector is immune to privacy or security issues. This week a jury in a district court in Pennsylvania awarded $1,000 to each of the 68,000 class members who claimed that Bucks County, a county just outside Philadelphia, and several other municipal entities, violated state law by making their criminal records public, in Taha v Bucks County. Bucks County potentially faces up to $68 million in damages.
This case arises from claims brought by Daryoush Taha in 2012, who alleged that the county’s inmate search tool, which was made available to the public in 2008, included access to an online database with criminal history records for all current and former Bucks County Correctional Facility inmates dating back to 1938 (nearly 68,000 individuals), in violation of Pennsylvania’s Criminal History Records Information Act (“CHRIA”).
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