A class action lawsuit has accused Windy City Limousine of allegedly improperly monitoring its drivers using face-scanning cameras, allegedly in violation of Illinois' biometrics privacy law.
The plaintiff, Kevin Lakes, is representing himself and other similarly affected individuals in the case, filed in Cook County Circuit Court on April 12.
According to the complaint, the company installed cameras in its vehicles to monitor drivers' performance in real time by scanning their faces while on the job. However, the complaint asserts the company allegedly did not inform its employees about the collection and storage of their so-called biometric data or obtain their written consent for these practices.
Further, it allegedly failed to disclose how long this data would be stored and what could potentially happen to it.
The lawsuit claims these alleged practices violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA.)
Lakes is seeking class certification on behalf of all others similarly situated who may have had their faces scanned while working for Windy City Limo in the past five years.
The lawsuit seeks damages of $1,000-$5,000 per alleged violation, as allowed under the BIPA law. The Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the BIPA law to define individual violations as each time someone's biometric identifiers are scanned without first abiding by BIPA's notice and consent provisions. The lawsuit does not estimate how many times Windy City Limo may have allegedly scanned workers' biometrics.
However, other similar complaints have sought to multiply damages across the entire workforce, including multiple scans of workers' biometrics per day, potentially amounting to massive damages, which some judges have said could be "annihilative" for a company.