Seventh Circuit Affirms Insurer Must Cover Defense in SGT Class Actions Over Clearview AI Scans

June 15, 2023

Law360 reported on a key decision in Silver Golub & Teitell's bid to hold Wynndalco Enterprises LLC accountable under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act for selling Clearview AI's database of facial scans to the Chicago Police Department.

In a unanimous opinion, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Citizens Insurance Co of America must honor Wynndalco's $4 million business liability policy as Wynndalco defends against two proposed BIPA class actions, saying the policy's exclusion provision is too broad to let Citizens off the hook, Law360 reported. "We agree with the district court that this conflict between the competing provisions granting and excluding coverage gives rise to an ambiguity: the broad language of the catch-all exclusion purports to take away with one hand what the policy purports to give with the other in defining covered personal and advertising injuries," the 7th Circuit wrote in the opinion, published on June 15.

The decision ends efforts by Citizens to avoid defending or indemnifying Wynndalco, Law360 reported.

SGT represents consumers in the proposed class actions, which claim that Wynndalco, acting as a vendor for artificial intelligence company Clearview AI, sold a database of more than 3 billion facial scans collected from social media to the Chicago Police Department. SGT also represented the BIPA plaintiffs and Wynndalco in the lawsuit brought by Citizens Insurance.

The article is available here:

Law360: 7th Circ. Affirms Insurer Must Cover IT Co.'s BIPA Defense (subscription required)