ON LEGAL

November 2022

State Attorney General Bonta urges Apple to protect reproductive health data

CUPERTINO — Backed by a coalition of 10 other attorneys general, California Attorney General Rob Bonta urged Apple to protect people’s reproductive health information from third-party apps.

In light of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Bonta expressed in a letter Monday that he’s concerned consumers’ private health data could be weaponized against them when seeking reproductive care if they come from one of the 14 states that have restricted or banned abortions.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks during a press conference in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA – October 12: California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images


Search histories, locations and logged health information could potentially be misused to target people seeking out an abortion, said the attorneys general.

“California leads the nation when it comes to digital privacy and reproductive freedom. We’re calling on tech companies like Apple, who call our state home, to lead by example as well,” said Attorney General Bonta. “With reproductive rights under attack across the nation, our fight to protect reproductive freedom has never been more crucial. We urge Apple to heed our call and protect their users from attempts to regulate their bodies and curtail their freedom by improving consumer protections for third-party party apps in the App Store.”

Apple has previously taken measures to protect user’s privacy, such as ensuring all Apply Health data is encrypted. But apps that sync with Apple Health data or independently collect their own health data do not meet the same standards, alleges Bonta.

Attorneys general are asking Apple to affirm their commitment to protecting consumer privacy with three measures – delete non-essential data for an app’s usage like search and location history of people seeking reproductive healthcare, provide notices that third parties can only acquire such data from apps with a valid court order and that apps with health

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November 30, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Auto, homeowner insurance shopping declines in Q3 because of hurricane activity: TransUnion

A return to the office and commuting could drive insurance shopping activity in 2023, TransUnion said. (iStock)

Hurricane Ian impacted auto and home insurance activity in the third quarter of 2022, a recent TransUnion report said. As a result of the storm, overall spending in these markets dipped 2% below the previous quarter.

However, insurance activity got a boost from more consumers buying new cars. There was an 11% uptick in automobile sales during the month of October, compared to the same time last year, TransUnion said, citing JD Power.

Inflation and higher premium prices also drove consumers to shop for insurance carriers at lower rates, the report said.

“The good news this quarter is that automobile inventories saw signs of relief to better meet pent up consumer demands,” Michelle Jackson, senior director of personal property and casualty insurance in TransUnion’s insurance business, said. “What’s more, the demand itself is likely to increase as more employees are commuting into the office – all of which should have knock-on effects for auto sales and insurance shopping.”

If you are looking for ways to save on your home or auto insurance, comparing multiple insurance companies can help you find the best rate. You can visit Credible to shop around and find the best options for you.

MAJORITY OF AMERICANS FEAR A RECESSION IS COMING, SURVEY SAYS

Bundling drives up home insurance shopping

Shopping for homeowners’ insurance dipped 1% below second-quarter activity and was down 7% from last year, TransUnion said.

Much of the activity was driven by homebuyers relocating to new states. Lower-cost states with strong economies, such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina, saw the most significant influx of homebuyers.

Consumers looking for lower auto insurance premiums also drove up shopping trends on the home insurance side, led by

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November 30, 2022 by INSURANCE

Virgin Galactic, Preparing for Liftoff, Appoints New Top Lawyer

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., a commercial spaceflight company backed by billionaire Richard Branson, has named Sarah Kim its chief legal officer and corporate secretary.

Kim, who has been general counsel for the newly-merged Topgolf Callaway Brands Inc., will take on those roles as of Dec. 5, Virgin Galactic announced this week. She succeeds former legal chief Michelle Kley, who left Virgin Galactic in July.

“As someone who has a lifelong interest in the sciences and space, I cannot wait to help play a role in the future of this transformative and rapidly growing industry,” Kim said in a statement.

The spaceflight industry, whose major player including Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin LLC and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has been hiring in-house lawyers to address legal and regulatory challenges.

Tustin, Calif.-based Virgin Galactic said earlier this month that it expects to begin commercial spaceflights by the second quarter of 2023having previously delayed tests and a plan to carry its founder Branson into orbit.

Branson eventually blasted off in July 2021 but the company’s share price fell following its most recent flight postponement in August.

Virgin Galactic faces shareholder litigation over a merger with a special purpose acquisition company that took it public three years ago. Roughly a quarter of Branson’s estimated $5.2 billion fortune is invested in companies that went public using such vehicles, according to Bloomberg News.

Topgolf Callaway, where Kim worked before joining Virgin Galactic, was formed last year after predecessor Callaway Golf Co. agreed to pay $2 billion to acquire the rest of what it didn’t already own in Topgolf International Inc.

Brian Lynch, Topgolf Callaway’s chief financial officer and a former general counsel at Callaway Golf, also now serves as the combined company’s chief legal officer, according to its executive

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November 30, 2022 by LAW

Lillian Moy, lawyer and ‘do-gooder’, looks back on 27 years at Legal Aid Society in Albany

ALBANY – In 1995, when Lillian Moy became executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, the job she would hold for the next 27 years, nonprofit law firms that provided civil legal services for the poor were hardly major political players.

By Moy’s second year, their funding was on the chopping block in Congress.

“One of my friends said that year that the only thing less popular in Washington DC than a poor person was a poor person with a lawyer,” Moy said recently.

In more than a quarter-century since that time, Moy led the society to expand its services to litigants, its level of financial and volunteer support from law firms and its coverage area from six upstate counties to 16. After 27 years, Moy will retire on Dec. 16, capping a career that’s brought much-needed legal representation for the underserved, as well as accolades from some of the highest-profile legal minds in Albany and beyond.

“Her passion, perversion, and tireless pursuit of justice are inspiring. We could not have asked for a better leader,” James Hacker, a managing partner in the firm of E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy and the chair of the society’s board of directors , said at a gala celebration in Moy’s honor at the Albany Capital Center on Nov. 9.

“Lillian has been a driving force in increasing access to justice to meet the needs of our low-income communities,” Hacker said. “Her work has helped tens of thousands of families and individuals access the legal services they need to help with unemployment, homelessness prevention, education, disability, and hundreds of other civil legal matters.”

Moy, who graduated from Hunter College in 1974 and Boston University School of Law in 1981, found her niche in a critical area of ​​the law that

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November 30, 2022 by LEGAL

Athens’ District Attorney Office joins group to create juvenile diversion program

The Western Circuit District Attorney’s Office announced recently that it is creating a Juvenile Restorative Justice Diversion Program.

The program was created in a partnership with the Georgia Conflict Center in Athens, according to its executive director Danny Malec.

The conflict center works with schools and criminal justice organizations. The nonprofit was created in 2010.

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Restorative justice is an “evidence-backed philosophy” that focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with the victims and community in which the offender takes accountability for their actions, according to a news release from the DA’s office.

ACCPD chaplain Shane Sims speaks at the swearing-in ceremony of Deborah Gonzalez for District Attorney in Athens, GA., on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020. " You see, were it not for the ideas and hopes that she represents, I would be somewhere languishing riding the wave in prison," Sims said, who was arrested for armed robbery as a teenager and sentenced to life plus 15 years in prison. After about ten years in prison, the warden noticed him, Òa warden who represented the same beliefs and hopes that Deborah Gonzalez brought to the office, the restorative approach to Criminal justice as opposed to a purely punitive approach. (Photo/Joshua L. Jones, Athens Banner-Herald)

ACCPD chaplain Shane Sims speaks at the swearing-in ceremony of Deborah Gonzalez for District Attorney in Athens, GA., on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020. “You see, were it not for the ideas and hopes that she represented, I would be somewhere languishing riding the wave in prison,” Sims said, who was arrested for armed robbery as a teenager and sentenced to life plus 15 years in prison. After about ten years in prison, the warden noticed him, Òa warden who represented the same beliefs and hopes that Deborah Gonzalez brought to the office, the restorative approach to Criminal justice as opposed to a purely punitive approach. (Photo/Joshua L. Jones, Athens Banner-Herald)

“This method has shown high satisfaction rates for offenders, victims, and the overall community in which restorative justice is practiced,” according to the DA.

The District Attorney said the current responses to juvenile delinquency have proven ineffective.

Those eligible for the program are 16 and under and will be identified through the DA’s office. If the juvenile agrees to participate, he or she will be referred to the Georgia

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November 29, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Federal Labor removes gag on legal aid centers that banned political advocacy | Australian politics

The Labor government has removed the Coalition’s gag on legal aid organizations taking part in political advocacy and lobbying, saying it “is ending this political censorship”.

On Tuesday the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, announced the gag on community legal centers receiving federal funding had been removed from the deal with states and territories regulating legal aid, as part of Labor’s broader commitment to allow social, legal and environmental charities to lobby government .

The gag, introduced by the Abbott government in 2014, prevented legal aid centers at the coalface of social issues including welfare, family violence, housing and consumer law from seeking law reform, including specialist domestic violence and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services.

Prior to 2014 the national legal assistance partnership stated that federal funding did not restrict the right of organizations “to enter into public debate or criticism of the commonwealth, its agencies, employees, servants or agents”.

In a statement Dreyfus said the Albanese government “is ending this political censorship and restoring independence and free speech to the community legal sector”.

“The government, and the Australian community can only benefit if legal assistance providers are able to speak up, and advocate for reform.

“Legal assistance providers are superbly well placed to provide advice on law reform and legal assistance.”

He said community legal centres, legal aid commissions, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services played a “crucial role” in ensuring all Australians could access justice systems.

“They understand better than most of the challenges in their sector and the impacts of unmet need on vulnerable Australians.”

Under changes to the 2020-25 national legal assistance partnership, agreed with states and territories, the government has also cut reporting requirements, including time accounting for each matter supported by federal funding.

Dreyfus said this would “ease the administrative

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November 29, 2022 by LEGAL

Attorney General of The Bahamas Defends Its Crypto Savvy in Wake of FTX Crash

Ryan Pinder, Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs for The Bahamas, held a late Sunday press conference to defend the “integrity of our jurisdiction,” asserting that—despite his country’s reputation as a “crypto paradise” and haven for cryptocurrency schemes— “The Bahamas is a place of laws.”

The 20 minute addresses, broadcast live onlinementioned the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX more than 40 times, but named its disgraced founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, only once.

“We have been shocked at the ignorance of those who assert that FTX came to the Bahamas because they did not want to submit to regulatory scrutiny,” Pinder said. “In fact, the world is full of countries in which there is no legislative or regulatory authority over the crypto and digital asset business, but The Bahamas is not one of these countries.”

Pinder acknowledged “the enormous interest” in the FTX case, but warned that “the basic facts have been obscured by guessing games and rumors.”

The Bahamanian official recapped the series of events that led to the FTX crash, noting that Alameda Research currently remains outside its jurisdiction—unless the firm “is found to have committed any improprieties in the Bahamas.”

Pinder also pointed out that the failure of FTX was only one failure in a string of business failures in recent months.

“On a basic level, recent events involving the insolvency crisis experienced by the FTX group of companies have been experienced around the world in practically every sector,” Pinder said. “What happened can be more easily understood as a case of a very large business failure as a result of questionable internal management practices and corporate governance.”

bahamas/” data-ylk=”slk:Would-Be Crypto Sleuths Converge on Bahamas to Hunt for SBF” class=”link “Would-Be Crypto Sleuths Converge on Bahamas to Hunt for SBF

Pinder was born in The Bahamas but

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November 28, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Brown & Brown Stock: Conservative & Stable Insurance Play (NYSE:BRO)

Mature couple with insurance agent at home

Morsa Images

Dear readers/followers,

I invest frequently in insurance companies and related businesses and have been doing so since I started investing in the stock market. While I don’t currently own stock in Brown & Brown (NYSE: BRO), it’s not a bad business as such. BRO is headquartered in Florida, has been around for well over 75 years, employs 12,000+ people, and does business across the USCanada, Caymans, Ireland, and the UK.

Let’s look at what the company does and what would make this a good investment for someone looking to invest in the industry.

Brown & Brown – What does the company do?

BRO, as a business, is a diversified insurance agency, brokerage, programs and service organization. The company’s business idea is to market and sell insurance products and services with an emphasis on the P&C and management of products/services sector.

The company’s operating model is as an agent, or broker, and this means Brown & Brown does not assume any kind of underwriting risk – it just markets and sells, with the exception of its activities within the Wright Insurance Group, which focuses on a flood insurance operation.

Here’s the company’s revenue sales split and its ownership – which is attractive.

IR BRO

BRO IRs (BRO IRs)

The company has a proven historical track record of continued revenue growth – both organic and inorganic. The company has an experienced team of leaders, a diversified revenue base, and a capital allocation strategy that while not focusing on shareholder returns through dividends, has still rewarded shareholders with significant returns.

From its $3B of revenue, the company manages to squeeze a 30-33% EBITDAC margin – and that 30%+ is something the company has managed for over 4 years.

In a way, this operating model is far safer than

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November 28, 2022 by INSURANCE

More bad news for Florida’s struggling insurance market: Reinsurance rates are going up

As Florida lawmakers try to stabilize the troubled property-insurance system next month, they could face worsening problems with reinsurance, a critical part of the system.

Fitch Ratings released an analysis Wednesday that said overall reinsurance prices are expected to increase by more than 10 percent in 2023, pointing to losses from disasters such as Hurricane Ian and “increasing frequency and severity of natural catastrophe claims.”

“Price rises will be most pronounced in the regions worst affected by natural catastrophe events in 2022, including Australia, Florida and France,” the ratings agency said. “Hurricane Ian is likely to have caused between ($35 billion and $55 billion) of insured claims, making it one of the costliest natural catastrophe events ever.”

In the analysis posted online, Fitch also said it expects tighter restrictions when reinsurance policies are renewed in 2023, while raising the possibility that Florida property insurers will not be able to buy all of the reinsurance they need.

“Nevertheless, we believe the demand for property catastrophe reinsurance during the 2023 renewal season will be broadly met, except for Florida,” the analysis said.

Reinsurance, which is sold in a global market, is essentially backup coverage for insurers. It plays a crucial role in Florida, as evidenced by the projected tens of billions of dollars in damage from the Category 4 Hurricane Ian, which made landfall Sept. 28 in Southwest Florida before crossing the state.

When property insurers’ losses reach certain thresholds, reinsurance coverage is triggered to help pay claims. The costs of reinsurance are baked into policyholders’ rates.

Florida property insurers rely on a combination of reinsurance bought in the private market and from the state-run Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. As an example of the importance of reinsurance, the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund estimated last month it would have $10 billion in losses

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November 27, 2022 by INSURANCE

Attorney’s rush to advise St. Ignatius parents upsetting

Speak Out allows readers to comment on the issues of the day. Email Speak Out at [email protected] or call 312-222-2427. Please limit comments to 30 seconds or about 100 words and give your first name and your hometown.

Sending healing thoughts to the families of St. Ignatius hockey team that was involved in the horrible crash while in Indiana. Am I the only person that is upset with the attorney/parent that continued these families offering free legal advice so soon after? After all, if given these cases they will stand to make millions of dollars in legal fees. I don’t see a parent trying to help and soothe the anguish of these families, I see a money grabbing, ambulance chaser.

Linda, Orland Park

Now that Republicans control the House, they have promised an investigation of the Biden crime family. Of course, the Democrat voters know nothing about Hunter, Jim and Joe because they live on CNN and MSNBC, the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

Jim, Homewood

It’s about time. Nancy Pelosi has announced she will not seek a leadership role in the House in the upcoming Congress. It’s too bad for her party she didn’t do that sooner. Just as many points to the former president as the reason for the lackluster Republican results at the midterm, she may have done her party a favor by stepping aside before Nov. 8. Perhaps she is at least part of the reason Republicans were able to regain a major in the House.

Mary, Tinley Park

I have always wondered when candidates won an election by 1 or 2 percentage points, say 51 to 49, did they ever think about the voters who voted against them. Or, does the candidate say to themselves I won and that is that. I do not

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November 25, 2022 by ATTORNEY
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