News in Brief September 26 – Converse, Apple, Yahoo

Class Certified in Converse Workers’ Suit Over Bag Check Pay

Workers employed by Nike-owned shoe maker Converse Inc. scored a victory in court late last week after a judge certified a class of more than 1,500 retail employees who allegedly were not compensated for time spent undergoing mandatory off-the-clock bag checks. Though the lawsuit was filed in California court in July 2015, the case was removed to federal court the following month due to the number of possible claimants and potential volume of damages involved. The class includes all nonexempt employees in California who worked at Converse retail stores since June 2011.

CA Lawsuit Says Apple’s 2013 Mac Pros Contain Defective Parts

Apple Inc. is facing a proposed class action out of California claiming the company’s 2013 model year Mac Pro desktop computers contain defective parts that greatly affect the machines’ performance. The computers’ allegedly defective graphics processing units and RAM are specifically spotlighted in the lawsuit, which posits the components could malfunction to the point where the Mac Pro—a powerful machine that can cost between $5,000 and $10,000—could be rendered useless. Court documents mention that users have reported experiencing freezes, shut downs, screen malfunctions, crashes and data loss.

Class Actions Rain Down on Yahoo! After Gargantuan 2014 Data Breach

Yahoo! is in the middle of a hail storm of litigation after three proposed class actions were filed against the company mere hours after it made public a 2014 data breach said to have affected at least 500 million users’ data. While the ink still dried on the Verizon Wireless-owned tech staple’s announcement, plaintiffs in California and Illinois filed the suits alleging Yahoo! violated state and federal laws by failing to protect sensitive user information from what is believed to be a “state-sponsored actor” responsible for the hack. Though Yahoo! said it believes no credit card or bank account data was taken in the breach, one of the California actions seeks more than $5 million in damages, with attorneys adding: “the fact that a breach of this magnitude went undetected at a tech giant like Yahoo for two years is astounding.”