• by Wendy Davis , 3 hours ago

A federal judge has rejected Google's request to vacate a jury verdict requiring the company to pay $425 million for allegedly violating mobile users' privacy.

The ruling, issued late last week by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg, came in a class-action lawsuit by smartphone users who said Google gathered analytics information after they attempted to block data collection.

Mobile users including lead plaintiff Anibal Rodriguez alleged in a 2020 complaint that Google uses its Analytics for Firebase code -- which can collect data about app usage -- to gather app-related data even when users toggle off a "Web & App Activity" setting.

In September a jury determined after trial that Google was liable for two related privacy claims, and assessed damages at $425 million. Both of those claims required the jury to find that mobile users had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data, and that Google engaged in highly offensive conduct.

Google subsequently asked Seeborg to scrap the verdict, arguing that the lawsuit should never have proceeded as a class-action.

Google specifically argued that the privacy claims at issue required proof that the company engaged in "highly offensive" conduct, and that figuring out whether a privacy violation is "highly offensive" requires a person-by-person analysis.

Seeborg rejected that argument.

"The core of plaintiffs’ theory is and always has been that Google’s decision to collect certain data after it said it would not was inherently offensive. That theory is perfectly susceptible to collective proof," he wrote.

For their part, attorneys for Rodriguez and other plaintiffs had urged Seeborg to order Google to disgorge $2.36 billion -- a figure class counsel said represents profits attributable to the analytics data -- and issue an injunction prohibiting Google from collecting some app-related data.

Seeborg also rejected those requests, writing that the plaintiffs were not entitled to an injunction because they hadn't established that they would face "irreparable harm" without one. He added that their estimate of Google's profits from the analytics data was "not supported."