A Wheeling woman has partnered with a Northbrook plaintiffs' law firm to target three cosmetics and an eyewear seller with class action lawsuits under Illinois' stringent biometrics privacy law, accusing the companies of improperly scanning the faces of customers using their online virtual try-on tools.
Named plaintiff Jennifer Conidi filed multiple class action lawsuits in Cook County Circuit Court on March 3, each accusing the different defendant companies of similar violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act (BIPA).
Cases filed March 3 include:
David B. Levin
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Jennifer Conidi vs. Ulta Salon, Cosmetics, and Fragrance. Headquartered in suburban Bolingbrook, Ulta Salon and Cosmetics is a Fortune 500 traded company founded in 1990. Ulta has offered a wide spectrum of beauty products targeted at high and low end price points that customers could try on at the store. Ulta the moved to duplicate its unique try-on option with a virtual make-up "try-on" tool allowing customers to scan and upload images of their faces to the website and virtually apply make-up to those pictures of their faces prior to purchasing.
Jennifer Conidi vs Luminess Direct, LLC d/b/a Luminess Cosmetics. Founded in 1996 by Sean Mehta, Luminess is one of the largest beauty brands offering a direct-to-consumer business structure. Luminess offers visitors to their website the ability to select their custom shade of make-up by utilizing the "Find-My-Shade" virtual try-on tool. Customers can scan their face and upload the image to be analyzed.
Jennifer Conidi vs Furrer, Inc d/b/a Cliclime.com Headquartered in Delaware, CliCliMe is a subsidiary of Zhenjiang Furrer Technology Co., located in Jiangsu Province, China. CliCliMe is an online retailer of fashion eyewear offering direct to consumer products. Customers have the option to try on frames prior to purchase on the CliCliMe website by uploading their image to the website. The website does currently contain a disclaimer asking first for consent then informing the customer that the uploaded image will not be saved or stored, only used in real time for simulation purposes.
Jennifer Conidi vs Kiko USA, LLC d/b/a Kiko Cosmetics and Kiko Milano. Founded in 1997 by Percassi, Kiko Milano cosmetics is headquartered in Bergamo,Italy, with US offices in New York. It is an Italian brand of professional grade cosmetics known for their selection of make-up and body treatments. Their website also offers a virtual try-on tool, the Kiko Visual Simulator where customers can "sample" various cosmetics to select their custom look by uploading their image to the website.
Class action lawsuits under the BIPA law continue to grow exponentially, attractive to both lawyers and plaintiffs for their potential big payoffs. The BIPA law was enacted in 2008 ostensibly to protect people's so-called biometric identifiers from being lost or stolen, potentially leading to dangerous kinds of identity theft.
The law, however, has been used since 2015 to launch thousands of potentially "crippling" lawsuits against a host of different companies, seeking to land potentially massive paydays that can run well into the millions or even billions of dollars per lawsuit.
Each of the named defendants in Conidi's cases are accused of violating BIPA for its alleged failure to obtain informed consent from users before scanning their face geometry and provide certain required notices concerning how the scanned information could be used, shared and ultimately destroyed. These suits each contend that users are allegedly not notified their biometric data would be collected and shared with third parties. It is not known how many other people may be included in the class action. The complaints indicate there could be tens of thousands of Illinois residents impacted, including Conidi.
Plaintiff is demanding a trial by jury for each case and is seeking damages of $1,000 to $5,000 per violation, as allowed by the BIPA law, plus attorney fees and court costs. The Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the law to allow plaintiffs to define individual violations as each time someone's biometric identifiers are scanned, not just the first time, dating back up to five years in the past, putting defendants at risk of what some on the state Supreme Court warned could amoung to potentially "annihilative" damages.
Conidi is represented by attorney Todd M Friedman of the Law Offices of Todd M.Friedman P.C., with offices in suburban Northbrook and in Woodland Hills, California.