Declarations
“Can you guarantee the people who buy your house that that water is going to stay out of there? I don’t think you can.”
— Matthew Jewell, chair of Louisiana’s Iberville Parish Council, addressing property developers at a June 15 meeting at which the parish council approved a one-year moratorium on new development in part of its jurisdiction to address concerns about drainage following severe flash flooding in May. Despite the objections of developers, the council unanimously voted to halt the construction of high-density subdivisions within unincorporated areas east of the Mississippi River.
“The defendants strongly believe that neither CPS, its employees, nor the school nurse were responsible for the tragic death of Gabriel Taye. … CPS embraces the goal of eliminating bullying within schools, as well as continuing to refine and improve reporting, management, and training processes related to incidents of bullying.”
— Attorney Aaron Herzig, a partner at the Taft law firm, who represented Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), comments after the parents of Gabriel Taye, an 8-year-old boy who killed himself after being bullied repeatedly at school, reached a tentative $3 million settlement with the district in a wrongful death suit. CPS agreed to develop a plan to prevent a repeat of such bullying and submit to two years of oversight of its anti-bullying plan.
“This suit focused on several individual female employees and not the whole department. Still, we have undertaken a study of our salary structure to identify and address any broader pay disparities.”
— New Mexico State Chief Public Defender Bennett Baur said a 2018 study did not find widespread pay inequities as alleged in a lawsuit against his department, while he noted that efforts are underway to identify any broader pay disparities.
“It is our policy, it is our guidance, from the FBI, that companies should not pay the ransom for a number of reasons.”
— Testifying in June before Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray said top U.S. law enforcement officials urge companies not to meet ransomware demands. The Associated Press reported, however, that tax experts say companies paying ransomware demands directly are within their rights to claim a deduction for the payment as it can be categorized as an “ordinary and necessary expense.” Officials say payments lead to more ransomware attacks.
“It was hard, and it’s still hard to go out and socialize without someone bringing it up and it being the center of the topic of conversation. … It’s embarrassing.”
— Gayla White, an Alabama woman who was cleared of theft charges after a former employer, Eddie Donaldson, accused her of stealing from his wedding venue business. She is now suing her one-time boss for $4 million. The suit accuses Donaldson of defamation, slander, libel, malicious prosecution and abuse of process. White said she’d often stay at home because of the humiliating accusations, and her family felt isolated because of the experience.
“Ultimately, there is an expectation that regulated entities are responsible for knowing what the law is and what protected information they have, what information their third-party service providers have access to, how their systems are set up, how their systems and physical plants are protected from intrusion, what the current best practices in cybersecurity are and what cyberthreats are developing.”
— Maine Bureau of Insurance Superintendent Eric Cioppa regarding the Maine Insurance Data Security Act, his state’s version of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) model data security law.