Sapientia’s team of experienced attorneys represent individuals whose privacy rights and interests have been violated or invaded. These matters range from disclosure or misuse of such things as personal information, medical information, and protected driver’s license information. Sapientia has successfully obtained injunctive relief, monetary damages, and the recovery of reasonable attorneys’ fees on behalf of its clients in these situations.

In 2012, Sapientia handled one of the largest privacy law settlements for an individual in the history of the state of Minnesota. It was one of the first such cases arising under the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act—a statute that provides for civil and criminal penalties if anyone, including law- enforcement personnel, accesses, uses or discloses an individual’s private driver’s license information from a state DMV database without a permissible purpose. This case involved over 23 departments and 145 individual peace officers. As a result of this case, significant changes in law-enforcement policies and practices in Minnesota have occurred, helping to reduce the impermissible accessing and use of other citizen’s private drivers’ license information.  Portions of that case were settled for over $1,000,000.

In addition, Sapientia filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of of 5,000 Minnesotans whose private drivers’ license information was impermissibly accessed by a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources employee more than 11,000 times.

Sapientia also filed a lawsuit on behalf of a local news reporter who had her private driver’s license information accessed by more than 170 law-enforcement personnel over 500 times.

In fact, Sapientia’ privacy-law team represents numerous local television and radio personalities in actions against law enforcement who accessed their sensitive private information such as social security numbers, home addresses and medical information.

Sapientia privacy-law attorney Kenn Fukuda was also quoted in a St. Paul Pioneer Press story about the firm’s representation of a client who had her private, personal drivers’ license information accessed by law enforcement more than any other reported case in Minnesota.

Sapientia’s development of its privacy law practice exemplifies several of the firm’s core values: listen to clients, deliver results, and make a difference. As with all matters, our privacy clients have the opportunity to work with a diverse, experienced team of lawyers to pursue appropriate relief when their privacy rights have been infringed or harmed.

Meet our Privacy Attorneys: Larry Fett, Jon Strauss, Sonia Miller-Van Oort, Kenn H. Fukuda, Mark Zitzewitz