Pictured are Andrew and Gytahnna Loffgren of Dixon firm Element Electric, which is facing damages of $200,000 for alleged violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. The Loffgrens say predatory lawyers are behind the suit. Photo by Kevin Dietrich

SACRAMENTO REGION, CA (MPG) - Sacramento-area and Bay Area small businesses are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign Senate Bill 690, which amends the California Invasion of Privacy Act relating to pen register and trap-and-trace violations.

The violations pertain to recording phone numbers but not the contents of communications, according to the Alliance for Legal Fairness. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill or it becomes law. A coalition of small businesses are saying lawyers are using a 1967 wiretapping law to sue businesses over “routine online data practices,” according to the website Stop CIPA Shakedown Lawsuits.

Elk Grove Plumbing, Drain, Heating and Air in Elk Grove and Galt and Element Electric in Dixon have been sued for alleged violations and favor the bill becoming law. Elk Grove Plumbing, Drain, Heating and Air is facing a $20,000 suit while Element Electric could be out $200,000.

Newsom’s office declined to comment on the legislation.

“We are begging the governor's office to please pass SB 690,” said Gytahnna Loffgren of Element Electric.

Element Electric is being sued by a Southern California law firm and the $200,000 is a substantial sum given that company employs a grand total of three people on a part-time basis.

“We’ve never been sued by anyone for anything, so this was a complete shock,” said Gytahnna Loffgren, whose husband Andrew operates the solar panel and battery installation company as a second job. “It’s a total abuse and misuse of the law.”

Back in May, the Loffgrens received the lawsuit in the mail. There was no accompanying letter with an explanation or a demand. Mou Law was suing Element Electric, alleging the business had multiple violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

“We had no idea who the person suing us was,” she said. “It took us two days to figure out that this was legitimate, and that involved getting ahold of someone who could get into the court system to see that it was real.”

A few weeks later, she was served with formal notice that Element Electric was being sued.

“This wasn’t a customer, it wasn’t someone from the area and it wasn’t someone that we’d ever heard of before,” Loffgren said.

Andrew Loffgren quickly reached out to others within the solar industry and discovered several other companies were being sued by a small group of trial lawyers seeking to extract settlements from businesses.

More than 4,200 lawsuits alleging a privacy claim involving the use of digital tracking technologies have been filed against California businesses since the middle of 2022, according to Fisher Phillips, a national law firm with dozens of U.S. offices, including a location in Sacramento.

“Digital wiretapping claims arise when opportunistic plaintiffs’ attorneys and pro se plaintiffs repurpose existing statutes originally intended to prevent people from listening in on phone calls and other communications,” according to information published on Fisher Phillips’s website last month.

“They claim that the very common practice of collecting data from website visitors through analytics tools (like cookies, pixels, session replay software, etc.) amounts to a violation of these old federal and state statutes,” the firm added.

According to Loffgren’s research, Mou Law alone has filed more than 200 lawsuits across 34 counties in California, including 38 against companies in Sacramento County.

“Of those lawsuits, 17 were filed on May 21, including the one we received, and they all have the same exact language,” Loffgren said.

Some California businesses have settled the suits against them. But Belinda Gutierrez, owner of Elk Grove Plumbing, Drain, Heating and Air, refuses.

“I don’t have it in me to settle with this lady,” Gutierrez said about Arcadia attorney Yao Mou.

Mou could not be reached for comment. Neither could a spokesperson for the Consumer Attorneys of California, which took a position opposing SB 690, according to CalMatters.

The suit against Elk Grove Plumbing, Drain, Heating and Air was filed in Southern California, where Gutierrez is willing to go to defend her company against it.

Elk Grove Plumbing, Drain, Heating and Air is facing four alleged violations, Gutierrez said.

But three of the four will be addressed by SB 690 if it becomes law, she said. The bill will be retroactive, addressing claims filed up to 2 years before the law goes into effect.

“I’ll take that,” she said.