Crowell & Moring Releases Litigation Forecast 2020: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year

The Internet of Things and AI Will Expose Companies to Increased Tort, Privacy, and Cybersecurity Litigation

Washington — January 22, 2020: Crowell & Moring has released Litigation Forecast 2020: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year. The eighth-annual Forecast provides forward-looking insights from leading Crowell & Moring lawyers to help legal departments anticipate and respond to challenges that might arise in the year ahead. For 2020, the Forecast focuses on how the digital revolution is giving rise to new litigation risks, and it explores trends in employment non-competes, the future of stare decisis, the role of smartphones in investigations and litigation, and more.

The cover story, “A Tangled Web: How the Internet of Things and AI Expose Companies to Increased Tort, Privacy, and Cybersecurity Litigation,” explores how the digital revolution is transforming not only high-tech companies, but also traditional industries with products, business models, and workforces that are being affected by increased connectivity, artificial intelligence, and the ability to gather and use tremendous amounts of data. But as companies embrace digitalization, new litigation threats loom, as government enforcers and plaintiffs’ lawyers employ new rights of action to pursue companies for the breaks and breaches that arise as new products are brought to market.

“At its heart, the digital revolution is about connectivity and creating connections between companies and consumers, manufacturers and their supply chains, and even between companies and the products they create. While this new era ushers in tremendous opportunities for companies and consumers alike, it also presents new risk in an environment where both the products and the law are often without precedent,” said Philip T. Inglima, Crowell & Moring chair. “Our goal through this Litigation Forecast is to help our clients navigate the increasingly complex connections between litigation and regulation, between technology and all the parties that depend on it.”

In “Non-Compete Agreements: Harder to Enforce?,” Crowell & Moring Labor & Employment Grouppartner Thomas P. Gies discusses how, although the use of non-compete and other post-employment restrictive agreements has increased, courts are beginning to signal that they are less willing to enforce overly aggressive applications. In the Forecast’s article on appellate law, “Stare Decisis: Will Precedent Survive Scrutiny?” Crowell & Moring partner and Environment & Natural Resources Group vice-chair Thomas A. Lorenzen explores how much weight the U.S. Supreme Court, with its new conservative majority, may give to its own precedents going forward. The Forecast also offers an in-depth jurisdictional analysis to help readers understand the data behind prominent litigation trends.

Articles in the Forecast include:

• Cover Story — A Tangled Web: How the Internet of Things and AI Expose Companies to Increased Tort, Privacy, and Cybersecurity Litigation
• Jurisdictional Analysis — Understanding the Data Behind the Trends
• Advertising — False Advertising Claims: Opting for Court
• Antitrust — Moving Front and Center
• Appellate — Stare Decisis: Will Precedent Survive Scrutiny?
• Environment & Natural Resources — The Multifront Battle of Chemical Regulation and Litigation
• Government Contracts — Government and Industry Tension Around Intellectual Property
• Health Care — The Growing Risk of Disability Litigation
• Intellectual Property — Venue In Patent Cases: The Sea Change Continues
• Labor & Employment — Non-Compete Agreements: Harder to Enforce?
• Torts — Sharing Supply Chain Risk
• International Trade — Importing: Risky Business
• UK Litigation — Class Actions: A New Era in the UK?
• White Collar — Smarter Phones, Bigger Risk

All of the articles from the Forecast are available at www.crowell.com/LitigationForecast. Follow the conversation on social media with #LitigationForecast, and look for our Regulatory Forecast 2020 coming soon.