• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 29, 2011

Data aggregator Spokeo is trying to put the brakes on a privacy lawsuit filed by a Web user who says that incorrect data on Spokeo is hindering his job search.

Spokeo recently filed papers asking U.S. District Court Judge Otis D. Wright II in the Central District of California to stay proceedings and send the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for a ruling on whether allegations by Thomas Robins of Vienna, Va. warrant a trial. 

Robins sued Spokeo last year for allegedly "unlawfully operating and profiting as a consumer reporting agency." He argues that the company violates the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act by offering inaccurate data about consumers without effectively allowing people to remove incorrect reports.

Spokeo allows anyone to search for detailed reports about individuals. The company gleans information from a variety of databases, including social-networking sites like LinkedIn and MySpace. It offers some information for free -- including people's addresses, phone numbers, estimated age and household composition -- and sells other data, including estimates of individuals' wealth.

Robins says some Spokeo data about him is correct, such as his neighborhood and siblings' names, but that most of the other data is incorrect. He says that contrary to Spokeo's report, he "is not in his 50s, is not married, is not employed in a professional or technical field, does not have a graduate degree, and has no children."

In February, Wright dismissed Robins' lawsuit on the grounds that he had not sufficiently alleged that Spokeo caused him economic injury -- which generally is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit. Robins responded by filing new papers alleging that incorrect information on the site cost him money by hampering his job search.

Wright ruled that those allegations were sufficient to warrant further proceedings.

But Spokeo says the issue should be decided by an appellate court. Among other reasons, Spokeo argues that questions about when consumers can sue for alleged privacy violations are coming up more frequently now than in the past.

"Spokeo is not the only Internet company facing litigation about its practices by plaintiffs who appear unable to articulate concrete and particularized harm," the company says, referring to lawsuits against Apple and Google for allegedly tracking users on iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Spokeo says that trial judges would "benefit from further Ninth Circuit guidance" on the issue.

Last week, Robins filed papers opposing that request.

Appellate courts typically do not get involved in cases until after there has been a full trial. For that reason, Spokeo's bid for intervention by the 9th Circuit "looks like a long shot," says Seattle-based Internet law expert Venkat Balasubramani. "Typically the denial of a motion to dismiss is not immediately appealable, and there's a strong preference for allowing a lawsuit to fully play out before the appeals court gets involved," he says.