For the last several years, the plaintiff’s bar has been bombarding companies doing business in Illinois with class action claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), 740 ILCS 14/1 et seq. Generally speaking, BIPA imposes certain notice, consent and other obligations on entities that collect biometrics in Illinois. Many of these cases are premised on employees’ use of so-called biometric timeclocks that purportedly scan employees’ fingerprints for timekeeping purposes.
This spate of BIPA class action lawsuits, in turn, has spawned derivative disputes over the scope of insurance coverage for such claims. Recently, an Illinois federal court concluded that an insurer has a duty to defend such claims under its employment practices liability (EPL) policy.
In Twin City Fire Insurance Co. v. Vonachen Services, Inc. et al., the insured was alleged to have violated BIPA in connection with its purported fingerprint-based employee timekeeping system. The insurer filed a declaratory judgment action contending that it owed no insurance obligations for these BIPA claims. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the United Stated States District Court for the Central District of Illinois found a duty to defend under the applicable EPL policy.
In particular, the employer’s EPL policy provided coverage for an “Employment Practices Wrongful Act,” which included an employee’s claim for “breach of any oral, written, or implied employment contract, including, without...
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