Welcome back to Inside Track!

With the New Year comes the California Consumer Privacy Act. Phil Recht, managing partner at Mayer Brown in Los Angeles, said as long as companies show good faith in their compliance efforts, they'll likely avoid prosecution under the CCPA.

Although the CCPA goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020, companies who have to comply with it have until July 1, 2020, or when they publish final regulations, to begin seeing enforcement actions from the California Attorney General's Office.

"I think that if you show good faith compliance efforts the chances of enforcement are slim," Recht said.

Even if companies are found to be in violation because of a breach, they have a 30-day cure period to avoid prosecution.

The CCPA, Recht says, was not meant to be punitive. Unlike the General Data Protection Regulation, its ultimate goal is to find the best business practices. The final regulations of the statute are still being debated.

A ballot measure could change that and make the CCPA more punitive in nature. In September, Californians for Consumer Privacy, filed a new ballot measure called California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act. According to a blog published by the law firm Cooley, the measure would create a new enforcement agency to oversee the data privacy law and new rights for consumers.

Is your legal department concerned about more punitive data privacy laws being passed? Let me know by emailing me at [email protected].

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What's Happening

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Uber's New Safety Standards

Uber's latest safety report put a spotlight on chief legal officer Tony West and how his legal department is addressing the 6,000 reports of sexual assault that Uber has had over the last two years on the road between its drivers and riders.

"Most companies don't talk about issues like sexual violence because doing so risks inviting negative headlines and public criticism," West said in the report. "But we feel it's time for a new approach. As someone who has prosecuted sex crimes and worked on these issues for more than 25 years, I can tell you that a new approach is sorely needed."

Mike Bomberger, a plaintiffs' attorney at San Diego-based Estey & Bomberger, said Uber is taking a step in the right direction but recently offered $20,000 to one of his clients who alleged rape by an Uber driver. He said Uber hasn't taken into consideration the extent of the victims' scars from undergoing a sexual assault.

"It's well known the cost of therapy—there have been studies—on average is $125,000 for a sexual assault victim. That amount of money [Uber offered] doesn't cover therapy or the pain and suffering," Bomberger said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017 said the estimated lifetime cost of rape was $122,461 per victim.

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Speaking to the increasing mobility and accelerating agility of the future-focused legal professional, Richard Robinson, director of legal operations and litigation Support at Toyota, is one of many industry thought leaders set to drive the business of law forward at Legalweek 2020.  READ MORE

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Forced To Hire A Compliance Chief

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The Department of Justice's deal $1 billion deferred prosecution agreement with Ericsson relies on chief compliance officer Laurie Waddy.

Waddy was hired in April to fix the compliance program after the DOJ claimed Ericsson violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Prosecutors accused the company of bribery and internal controls failures in five countries.

Waddy's resume suggests she's used to this kind of work. Before joining Ericsson, she worked as the chief compliance officer at the German-based Bilfinger and helped it get the same charges by the DOJ dismissed last December.

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What I've Been Reading

Michelle Bugbee, senior intellectual property counsel at Eastman Chemical Company, told New England In-House that gender diversity is important in innovation because a large part of the population is not having their ideas captured. "That results in a lost opportunity cost," Bugbee said. She said one factor contributing to gender disparity in innovation is women often feel that everything needs to be perfect before they submit it and that women are, sometimes, not put on the right projects.

James Baker, the former general counsel of the FBI, told CNN that he would like an apology from President Donald Trump. He also said the president should apologize to the FBI as a whole following the Justice Department's inspector general's report debunking the president's theories on why the Russia probe began.

Av Maharaj, the vice president of human resources and corporate legal affairs of Kraft Heinz Canada, told Canadian Lawyer Magazine he helped to implement flat fee arrangements with some of his firms. "There can be issues if you miss your budget. In essence, we have two great partners that enable us to expand our legal advice without the worry of cost because we have a fair degree of cost certainty over more than 70 percent of our legal spend," Maharaj said.

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Don't Miss

Monday, Jan. 13, 2020 to Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020 – The National Retail Federation will be hosting its General Counsel Forum Winter Meeting at the headquarters of Tapestry Inc. in New York.

Monday, Jan. 27, 2020 to Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020 – American Conference will be hosting a two-day forum on False Claims and Qui Tam Enforcement at the Park Lane Hotel in New York. Speakers will include Savaria B. Harris, senior counsel at Johnson & Johnson; Patrick McCarthy, managing general counsel at Fluor Government Group; and Maryana Zubok, senior corporate counsel at Pfizer Inc.

Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020 to Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020 – Law.com will be hosting the annual Legal Week conference at the New York Hilton Midtown. The featured keynote speakers this year include former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and Bettina Warburg, co-founder and managing partner of Warburg Serres Investments.

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On The Move

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✦ La Roche ✦ Claudia Böckstiegel will take over as general counsel when Gottlieb Keller retires on March 31. Böckstiegel joined Roche in 2001 as legal counsel for Roche Diagnostics in Mannheim, Germany. She most recently served as head of legal diagnostics for the company.

✦ QBE North America ✦ Mark Pasko has been made the chief legal officer of the commercial insurer. He joined the company in 2016 as senior vice president and general counsel of business unit support. He takes over for Jose Ramon Gonzalez, who left the company earlier this year to become GC of CNA Financial Corp.

✦ InterDigital ✦ Richard Gulino has been promoted from deputy general counsel of the mobile technology research company to chief legal officer and general counsel. He will begin the role in January when Jannie Lau retires.