Because low blood oxygen may be an early symptom of serious COVID-19 disease, interest has quickly amounted among consumers and medical professionals in enabling wider access to the decades-old technology. Ordinarily inexpensive and widely available, the small finger-clasp devices are now back ordered on long delays in online commerce. And now for the regulatory rub: “The Apple Watch actually contains hardware to measure blood-oxygen level, but under current FDA regulation, the function is disabled.” And while the old finger-clasp technology is luckily grandfathered in, technologies updating the idea face an onerous path to market under the Medical Device Regulation Act of 1976, which mandates FDA review. “Samsung’s Galaxy phones possessed the capacity to read blood oxygen as well as pulse through its built-in Samsung Health app — until the most recent version, the S20, which suspended the function, likely due to regulatory and legal concerns.” [James Copland, City Journal]
Posts Tagged ‘cellphones’
Put me on a list of people who sue a lot? See you in court!
Following a sharp rise in lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a business set up that provides lists of frequent TCPA litigants so that callers can make extra-sure not to place any calls to those numbers. A Pennsylvania man listed as a frequent litigant then proceeded to sue the service. “Yes, this actually happened: A person who really doesn’t like getting robocalls just sued a company that literally helps callers avoid calling people who really don’t like getting robocalls.” Now a federal court has dismissed his claim that the list provider, Blindbid Inc., is a consumer credit reporting bureau subject to the provisions of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, along with related claims of defamation and invasion of privacy. It did not resolve potential claims he might have under Ohio law. [Artin Betpera and Nicole Su, National Law Review]
King of the Hill (tech antitrust division)
Mar 2000: Palm Pilot IPO’s at $53 billion
Sep 2006: “Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cellphone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.’” – David Pogue (NYT)…
Jun 2007: iPhone released
Nov 2007: “Nokia: One Billion Customers—Can Anyone Catch the Cell Phone King?” (Forbes)
A brief history of impregnable tech monopolies that were pregnable after all, from personal computers to music distribution to social media, by Geoffrey Manne and Alec Stapp [Truth on the Market][adapted and condensed from Cato at Liberty]
Frontiers in client-chasing
An app billed as blocking unwanted calls was set up to funnel potential clients to lawyers filing suits under the bounty-hunting Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine/Forbes]
Fifth Circuit: Apple not liable for crash of driver reading texts
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has a rejected a products liability claim against Apple alleging that a woman’s neurobiological response to looking at a text message on her iPhone 5 while behind the wheel was the cause of a car crash that killed two people and paralyzed a child.” [John Council/Texas Lawyer, Tim Cushing/TechDirt; Meador v. Apple]
Ohio bans distracted driving, cops to fill in details
A number of states have banned driver use of handheld cellphones, but the Ohio legislature has now gone further by enacting a ban on distracted driving that
retains [such a ban] while also expanding distracted to include “Engaging in activity that is not necessary for the vehicle’s operation and that impairs, or reasonably would be expected to impair, the driver’s ability to drive safely.”
The new law provides no further explanation of the new definition, leaving it to the discretion of officers and the courts. It is thought that this definition could be applied to any kind of distraction that is related to an accident, including consuming food and beverages or adjusting car systems like climate and radio.
The problem here with vagueness and enforcement discretion go beyond the scope of the penalty, which for now is only $100. [Tim Zubizarreta, Jurist; Scott Greenfield; Tim Cushing on Twitter (“a blank check for pretextual stops”); earlier]
“Feds Order Google To Hand Over A Load Of Innocent Americans’ Locations”
Following robberies, the FBI is hitting Google with “reverse location” orders demanding that it turn over information on all users who were near crime locations at times crimes were committed. “Those users could be Android phone owners, anyone running Google Maps or any individual running Google services on their cell,” which will include many innocent persons. In a Henrico, Virginia, case, the FBI ordered Google to supply identifying information on all users within a several-block radius in a busy area. “Requests like this act as ‘general warrants’ and may violate the Fourth Amendment because they are not tied to a specific device,” said Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. [Thomas Brewster, Forbes]
Employers may need to accommodate claims of “digital addiction”
“If forms of ‘digital addiction’ qualify as a diagnosed psychiatric disorder, then employees who suffer from it may be protected by the ADA.” Employers might then be obliged under federal law to enter the so-called interactive process to negotiate possible courses of action and accommodations with the affected employee, rather than lay down hard-and-fast rules for what sorts of conduct will result in termination. [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer Law Blog]
Environment roundup
- “San Francisco Bans Straws, Cocktail Swords” [Christian Britschgi; more (funny memes proliferate)]
- Sharper distinction between legal treatment of “threatened” and “endangered” species would help species recovery efforts and line up with Congress’s intent [Jonathan Wood, PERC Reports]
- “It’s really interesting to me that the conversation around vegetarianism and the environment is so strongly centered on an assumption that every place in the world is on the limited land/surplus water plan.” [Sarah Taber Twitter thread]
- New podcast from Cato’s Libertarianism.org on eminent domain and civil forfeiture, with Tess Terrible and Trevor Burrus. More/background at Cato Daily Podcast;
- “OMG cellphone cancer coverup” piece in Guardian’s Observer “strewn with rudimentary errors and dubious inferences” [David Robert Grimes; David Gorski, Science-Based Medicine corrects piece by same authors, Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie, that ran in The Nation]
- Oh, that pro bono: despite talk of donated time, trial lawyers stand to gain 20% of proceeds should Boulder climate suit reach payday [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine, earlier]
Liability roundup
- Florida law firm that served drinks isn’t responsible for death of employee who walked home intoxicated and was hit by train [Florida appeals court, Salerno v. Del Mar Financial Service]
- Family speaks out after local motels hit with Scott Johnson ADA suits [Allison Levitsky, Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily Post first and second posts]
- “When third-party funders weigh in on settlements, they may pressure plaintiffs and their attorneys to settle early” to make Wall Street numbers [Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, New York Times] More/related: Miles Weiss, Bloomberg on George Soros involvement; Chris Bryant and Federalist Society teleforum with Travis Lenkner and John Beisner on proposed amendments to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to require disclosure of litigation financing arrangements;
- Phone-answering for dollars: “Man who has filed at least 83 TCPA lawsuits loses one in Tennessee court” [John O’Brien, Legal Newsline, earlier] “RICO case settled with TCPA firm accused of teaching former students to avoid paying loans by suing” [same]
- “The science on a link between talcum powder and cancer is uncertain” which didn’t keep Mark Lanier from scoring a $4.69 billion win in a St. Louis case [Jonathan D. Rockoff and Sara Randazzo, Wall Street Journal/Morningstar, Tim Bross, Margaret Cronin Fisk, and Jef Feeley, Bloomberg and related Fisk 2016 (“Welcome to St. Louis, the New Hot Spot for Litigation Tourists”), Reuters and more]
- “Trio of Soda Cases Test the Limits of Attorney-Driven Class Action Lawsuits” [Jeffrey B. Margulies, WLF]