Workforce Bulletin

Recent New York legislation will afford a class of sexual abuse victims the opportunity to sue their abusers, where they previously would have been time-barred. On May 24, 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the Adult Survivors Act (“ASA”) (S.66A/A.648A), which creates a one-year lookback window for alleged survivors of sexual assault that occurred when they were over the age of 18 to sue their alleged abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred. The one-year window will begin six months from signing – on November 24, 2022 and will close on November 23, 2023. In 2019, New York extended the statute of limitations to 20 years for adults filing civil lawsuits for  certain enumerated sex offenses. However, that legislation only affected new cases and was not retroactive. In contrast, the ASA permits individuals who were over the age of 18 when any alleged abuse occurred to sue for civil damages regardless of the statute of limitations.

Corporations incorporated in Delaware, regardless of whether they are domiciled in Delaware, should take note of a new Delaware law that went into effect on January 1, 2015 regarding the destruction of unencrypted personal identifying information concerning employees.  Under the new Safe Destruction of Records Containing Personal Identifying Information law (19 Del. C. § 736), employers are required to take “reasonable steps to destroy or arrange for the destruction” of unencrypted records containing employees’ “personal identifying information.”  Upon passing ...

Companies who utilize cloud vendors to store their data on cloud-based applications should be advised: failing to understand the application’s storage and retrieval capabilities, and failing to preserve such data during litigation could lead to sanctions for both the company and its counsel.  That’s the lesson to be learned from a recent case in the Southern District of Ohio, one of the first of its kind to directly address the intersection between the cloud and its impact on litigation strategy.

In Brown v. Tellermate Holdings, Ltd., Case No. 2:11-cv-1122, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS ...