Wireless providers including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon have faced a string of lawsuits in recent years from women who allege retail employees stole intimate images or videos from their phones while helping them with in-store data transfers.

The cases are routinely dismissed when the companies argue they weren’t aware of the staffer’s actions and aren’t liable because the employees were acting outside the scope of their duties. But that could soon change after a recent court ruling, legal experts told CNBC.

Now, the companies — not just the store workers — could face liability in future litigation, which could lead them to address the hiring, training and data safety practices that victims argue led to the violations, the experts said.

The latest lawsuit against AT&T was filed Monday in California state court. A woman identified as Jane Doe alleged that an employee at a Los Angeles store stole her nude images and distributed them in February after she upgraded her iPhone and he helped her with transferring her data.

That case, filed by attorneys from the C.A. Goldberg law firm, now has a better chance of surviving and making it to trial after an April court ruling against T-Mobile involving a similar incident in Washington that was brought by the same law firm. Judge Stanley Bastian, the judge overseeing the T-Mobile case, ruled it could move forward after the company sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. 

T-Mobile, like other phone carriers, had argued it wasn’t aware of the employee’s actions and said he was acting outside the scope of his duties. But the judge decided the company could potentially be liable and ruled the case should proceed.

The ruling, described by the law firm as a “landmark” decision, is the first of its kind against a wireless carrier accused of negligence for hiring employees alleged to have stolen sensitive customer data, the firm said. It could affect the fate of future cases, including the lawsuit filed against AT&T on Monday, legal experts said.

“That decision sets important precedent and we intend to continue to try to hold phone companies accountable for situations like this where their employees violate customer privacy during phone trade-ins or other transactions at the stores,” said Laura Hecht-Felella from C.A. Goldberg, one of the lead attorneys behind both the T-Mobile and the new AT&T case. “There’s a lot of different ways in which they can try to prevent this from happening and it’s clear whatever they’re currently doing is not adequate.”

Carrie Goldberg, the firm’s founder, added that the “hope really is not to attract more cases” but to encourage the companies to have better safeguards in place. 

“That’s what litigation does. It says you can be held responsible for your negligence,” said Goldberg. “And presumably that will induce the phone companies to innovate on their safety and privacy protections for consumers at their stores.” 

AT&T did not immediately respond to a request to comment. T-Mobile declined to comment.

In the case against AT&T, the woman filed a police report, which remains under investigation, according to the lawsuit.

At least six other similar accusations have been levied against AT&T in the past either in civil lawsuits or police reports, according to the complaint. The dispositions of those cases are unclear. The cases mirror at least a dozen more alleged to have happened at other providers, such as T-Mobile and Verizon, according to news reports. 

Goldberg says she suspects the cases that have been made public are “just the tip of the iceberg,” and there are likely more that customers never detected. 

“We suspect that the phenomenon of theft at cellular phone stores is bigger than we can comprehend,” said Goldberg. 

“As a society, we trust these cellular providers with all of our most private information,” said Goldberg. “And really there’s no limit to what their employees can steal off of our phones and then share with the world.”

She added that her firm has received “case after case after case” where customers allege phone store employees stole their data. Goldberg said the issue cuts across companies, making it an “industry-wide” concern. 

Andrew Stengel, a New York attorney who specializes in cases involving the nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images, better known as revenge porn, reviewed the T-Mobile Washington decision for CNBC. He said future cases, such as the AT&T lawsuit, now have a better chance of surviving motions to dismiss and progressing because the attorneys will be able to point to that precedent in their arguments. 

“It should make judges think twice or three times before they dismiss a claim,” said Stengel, who has brought a similar case against T-Mobile in the past but isn’t involved in the current litigation. “It should be able to give judges not only pause, but ammunition to agree.” 

If lawsuits against wireless carriers related to the theft of intimate images are allowed to proceed, they move into discovery, which Stengel likened to the “crown jewels” of a legal case. 

During discovery, defendants are required to turn over documents that are relevant to the case, which could reveal damning and implicating information. 

“There could be information that the cell phone companies would be required to disclose that will increase liability in the future,” said Stengel. “If I were their attorney, I’d be very concerned about that.”

Stengel cautioned that while the Washington decision may be “exciting,” it’s not binding and judges in other jurisdictions can choose to ignore it. 

Still, Goldberg expects the decision to be “influential.” She said it could impel phone companies to finally make changes to prevent these sorts of abuses. 

“We think that the cellular providers are going to be a lot less arrogant about what they can get away with,” said Goldberg. “If you’re a company that is consistently hiring rando pervs that steal consumers’ most private, intimate pictures, then, it’s the company’s fault.”

McDonald’s ‘$5 Meal Deal’ appears to be bringing back bargain-hungry customers amid broadly higher post-pandemic food prices.

The fast-food giant reported profit and sales Monday that missed analysts’ expectations, acknowledging an industrywide slowdown as consumers eat at home more often and trade down to cheaper items.

And while McDonald’s reputation as a lower-cost option continues to put it at an advantage, it is a shrinking one.

‘Consumers still recognize us as the value leader versus our key competitors, but it’s clear that our value leadership gap has recently shrunk,’ CEO Chris Kempczinski said on an earnings call Monday.

Since the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, overall food prices in the U.S. economy have climbed about 24%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with food-away-from-home costs surging 27% as restaurants faced higher labor and supply costs.

While McDonald’s weathered the resulting consumer environment as well as anyone, it began to see worsening results more recently as customers’ post-pandemic spending boom waned.

Enter McDonald’s $5 Meal Deal, which includes a McChicken or a McDouble (a double burger with one slice of cheese), a four-piece McNuggets serving, fries and a drink.

Launched in late June — largely before its impact could be reported in the company’s latest earnings report — the offering showed immediate results and was being extended at least through August in most U.S. markets.

‘We’ve seen a lot of enthusiasm, and the number of $5 Meal Deals sold are above expectations,’ McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger said on the call. While the combo was proving most popular among lower-income consumers, executives said average checks that include the deal have been over $10, which he said showed consumers are using it as an add-on to regular orders.

And from a brand-improvement perspective, Erlinger said, the offering had begun to reset the chain’s perception for value and affordability.

McDonald’s shares rose more than 3% Monday morning.

Companies across the U.S. economy are offering summer discounts to keep consumers spending — a strategy that appears to be working. Amazon just set a Prime Day spending record, and Salesforce tracking of online spending across retailers other than Amazon showed U.S. sales grew 3% as discounts jumped 10% since Prime Day last year.

“You have a heightened level of promotion, heightened levels of discounts, and that makes for a perfect storm where the consumer feels like ‘this is a really great opportunity for me to buy. I’m excited about spending,’” Vivek Pandya, Adobe’s lead insights analyst, told NBC News last week.

Even as inflation has cooled, signs of a struggling consumer continue to mount: According to Philadelphia Federal Reserve data, balance-based credit card delinquency rates were at their highest level in nearly 12 years as of the first quarter this year, though the total number of credit card accounts past due by 30, 60, and 90 days actually declined.

McDonald’s leadership acknowledged that despite the success of its new offering, it still faces an uphill battle as consumers continue to pull back.

‘At the end of the day, we expect customers will continue to feel the pinch of the economy and a higher cost of living for at least the next several quarters in this very competitive landscape,’ Erlinger said.

CNBC’s Kate Rogers and Robert Hum contributed to this article.

Apple on Monday released the first version of Apple Intelligence, its suite of artificial intelligence features that will improve Siri, automatically generate emails and images and sort notifications.

The new software called Apple Intelligence was released in the developer beta of iOS 18.1. It is also available in similar releases for iPad and Mac. It is currently only available to registered Apple developers. Apple’s developer program costs $99 a year.

In addition, users will have to register for a waitlist inside Apple’s settings app after updating to gain access to the service, which involves pinging Apple servers for more complicated requests.

Later this year, it will be released to the public, but the 18.1 version number suggests Apple Intelligence will not be released alongside new iPhone hardware, which is expected to be launched running iOS 18 in the fall.

Apple Intelligence is an important initiative for Apple. Investors hope the tight integration of AI with Apple’s operating system can spur a big wave of upgrades in the coming years, especially since the system will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max and newer.

″We expect this iPhone cycle to remain strong for longer as AI feature sets (software and possibly hardware) improve in the 2025 iPhone,” Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in a note Monday.

The preview does not include everything in Apple Intelligence the company demoed at its annual developers conference in June.

The preview released on Monday includes:

These features are not in the AI preview yet, although Apple says they will be rolled out over the next year:

The Federal Reserve is poised to make the first interest rate cut in years this fall, which can influence mortgage rates to go down.

Even small cuts in rates could make a meaningful difference in what a homebuyer will pay. To that point, people in the market to buy a home have been eagerly waiting for the central bank to cut rates.

The Fed is meeting this week, but experts say it seems more likely the first rate cut will come in September. That would be the first rate cut since 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While there is a less than 6% chance of a rate cut in the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee meeting, according to the CME’s FedWatch measure of futures market pricing, there is a much greater likelihood of quarter-point reductions in September, November and December.

That along with further cuts in 2025 would bring the the Fed’s benchmark fed funds rate to below 4% by the end of next year, according to some experts.

While mortgage rates are fixed and mostly tied to Treasury yields and the economy, they are partly influenced by the Fed’s policy. Home loan rates have already started to come down, in part induced by a Fed slowdown.

Here’s what homeowners and buyers need to know.

The first rate cut is almost entirely priced into financial markets already, especially bond markets, said Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm. In other words, mortgage rates aren’t going to change much once the Fed actually begins to cut back, she said.

“A lot of these rate cuts are already priced in,” she said.

The 30-year fixed rate mortgage declined to 6.78% on July 25, down from 7.22% on May 2, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed.

“Refinancings are starting to tick up, it’s not a huge wave yet, but they are starting to pick up a little bit as rates start coming down,” Zhao said.

Refinance activity on existing home loans was up 15% from the previous week, reaching the highest level since August 2022, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. It was 37% higher than a year ago, MBA found.

Whether homeowners should refinance depends in part on their existing rate, said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic.

“There are people that originated when mortgages peaked at 8% in the fall of last year,” Hepp said. For those buyers, “there is some opportunity there.”

To be “in the money,” or when it makes sense to refinance, homeowners need to see a notable drop in mortgage rates in order to benefit, experts say. The prevailing rate should be at least 50 basis points below your current rate. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.

While that can be a good strategy, it’s not a “hard and fast rule,” said Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree.

Timing the refinance of your home will depend on factors like your monthly mortgage payment and if you can pay closing costs, he said: “There’s a lot of variability.” (When you refinance a mortgage, you are likely to incur closing costs, as well as an appraisal and title insurance; and the total price tag will depend on your area.)

“The saving has to outweigh your upfront costs,” Zhao explained.

Even if your existing mortgage has a high rate, you might want to consider waiting until the central bank is further along in its cuts, with the expectation that rates are to steadily decline throughout the year and into 2025, Zhao said.

If you are thinking about it, reach out to lenders and see if refinancing now or in the near future makes the most sense for you, Channel said.

While lower rates can come as a relief for cost-constrained homebuyers, the real effects of lower borrowing costs are still up in the air, according to Zhao.

For instance: If borrowing costs for home loans come down, there’s a chance more buyers will jump in the market. And if demand outpaces supply, prices might go up even more, she said. It can “offset the relief you get from mortgage rates.”

But what exactly will happen in the housing market “is up in the air” depending on how much mortgage rates decline in the latter half of the year and the level of supply, Channel said.

“Timing the market is basically impossible,” Channel said. “If you’re always waiting for perfect market conditions, you’re going to be waiting forever. Buy now only if it’s a good idea for you.”

U.S. airlines are reducing their capacity through the end of the year in a bid to cool an oversupplied domestic market that has led to lower fares and reduced profits despite strong summer travel demand. For passengers, that could mean higher fares are on the way.

Over the last week, U.S. airlines had “one of the industry’s largest week-over-week capacity reductions,” shaving almost 1% off of their capacity planned for the fourth quarter, Deutsche Bank said in a note Sunday. Airlines now expect to grow flying about 4% year over year during the final three months of the year.

“Despite the sizeable overall reduction, we expect to see further cuts in the weeks ahead as carriers are expected to continue to refine their schedules,” Deutsche Bank airline analyst Michael Linenberg wrote in the note.

U.S. airline executives have noted strong demand but a domestic market that’s awash in flights, forcing them to dial back growth plans, which could drive up fares. The latest U.S. inflation report earlier this month showed airfare in June fell 5.1% from a year earlier and 5.7% from May.

Reducing capacity could drive up fares for consumers and boost airlines’ bottom lines, if travel demand holds up. Getting fares in the market that are profitable to airlines but palatable to consumers is crucial for the industry as consumers have pulled back on spending in other areas.

Third-quarter outlooks from Delta and United earlier this month disappointed investors, but their CEOs said they expected capacity pullbacks across the U.S. industry to materialize in August, helping results. Southwest Airlines forecast a potential drop in third-quarter unit revenue, a measure of how much money an airline brings in for the amount it’s flying. The airline said last week it will finally ditch its iconic open-seating model and introduce extra-legroom seats to drive up revenue.

American Airlines on Thursday reported a 46% decline in its second-quarter profit and said it plans to dial back its capacity growth in the coming months, expanding less than 1% in September over last year.

“That excess capacity led to a higher level of discounting activity in the quarter than we had anticipated,” CEO Robert Isom said on an earnings call last week. Overall, American plans to grow 3.5% in the second half of the year after expanding about 8% in the first six months of the year.

Low-cost and discount airlines have been more aggressive in cutting unprofitable routes and scaling back capacity. Those carriers plan to contract 2.2% in the fourth quarter from the same period of 2023, Deutsche Bank said.

JetBlue Airways, for example, has culled money-losing routes this year and deployed aircraft to more popular city pairs. The carrier is scheduled to report results before the market opens on Tuesday.

Spirit Airlines, meanwhile, warned of a wider-than-expected loss for the second quarter after nonticket revenue, which accounts for fees like checked bags and seating assignments, came in lighter than expected.

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high net worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

Family offices are increasingly offering lucrative shares of equity and deal profits to staff amid a growing battle for talent, according to a top family office attorney. 

As family offices surge in size and number, and compete more directly with private equity firms and venture funds for top staff, they’re sweetening their compensation plans. Along with salaries and bonuses, many are now offering equity stakes and various forms of profit-sharing to give employees more upside and incentives.

Patrick McCurry, partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP based in Chicago, who works with single-family offices, said family offices have to adapt to a more competitive hiring landscape.

“There is a war for talent,” McCurry said. “Family offices are competing for talent against each other, and against traditional private equity, hedge funds and venture capital.”

Family offices, the private investment arms of single families, are also shifting to profit shares as a way to better align the incentives of the staff with the family.

“It helps get everyone rowing in the same direction,” McCurry said.

In an article in the latest UBS Family Office Quarterly, McCurry said there are three common ways single-family offices are paying staff with deal and equity plans.

A profits interest gives an employee a share of upside in a deal or basket of deals. So if the family office buys a private company for $10 million and sells it for $15 million, the employee may get a share (say 5% or 6%) of the $5 million profit, or profit above a target or “hurdle.” If there is no profit, the employee gets no share. “Basically they don’t participate unless there is growth,” McCurry said.

They also save on taxes. Since the profit is a capital gain, the employee typically pays the long-term capital gains rate — which tops out at 20% — rather than the ordinary income rate, which can reach 37%.

A co-investment allows an employee or group to put their own money in an investment, effectively investing in a deal alongside the family. Often the family will lend a portion of the money to the employee for the investment, known as a leveraged co-investment. So an employee may put $100,000 into an investment, borrow another $200,000 from the family, and get a $300,000 stake.

If the deals make no profit, the employee loses their investment and potentially has to repay part of the loan. Family office owners like co-investments since it encourages employees to make less risky deals. They often pair co-investments with profit shares to create both upside and potential downside to staff.

“With co-invests you get a downside so you could get fewer ‘moonshot’ deals that would be high risk,” McCurry said.

If a family office is too complicated, with dozens of trusts, partnerships and funds that make it hard to issue profit shares or co-investments, they can sometimes offer phantom equity — notional shares of a basket of assets or fund or company that track performance without actual ownership. 

Phantom equity can be like a 401(k) plan that’s deferred tax free. But eventually it’s usually taxed at ordinary income rates, so it can be less attractive to the employee.

“It’s not as common, but it’s mainly used for simplicity,” McCurry said.

Because they serve a single family, family offices have more flexibility than many companies when it comes to designing pay plans. Yet McCurry said family offices that want to compete for talent need to start offering more forms of equity.

“There is a crowd effect,” he said. “The more family offices start offering it, the more employees expect it. You don’t want to be the outlier when everyone across the street is offering it.”

Tesla has issued a recall for more than 1.8 million vehicles after it received reports that the hoods on some were unintentionally popping open.

According to a document filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tesla said in March that it began to look into reports from drivers in China about what it called ‘unintended hood opening events.’

Subsequent company investigations revealed the presence of deformed hood latch switches, an issue that it said ‘could prevent the customer from being notified of an open hood state.’

Further studies led the company to issue a voluntary recall of affected vehicles ‘out of an abundance of caution.’ No injuries or deaths have been reported as a result of the issue, Tesla said, and only 1% of vehicles are likely to suffer from the defect.

But, it acknowledged that “unknowingly driving a vehicle with an unlatched hood may result in the hood fully opening and obstructing the driver’s view, increasing the risk of a collision.’

The recalled vehicles include:

To remedy the issue, Tesla has released an over-the-air software update, as it customarily does in instances of recalls.

The recall is Tesla’s ninth of the year, and the fourth since 2022 to affect more than 1 million vehicles. The company remains under federal investigation in the wake of a NHTSA report that found Tesla’s Autopilot system contributed to at least 467 collisions, 13 of which resulted in fatalities and “many others” yielding serious injuries.

Homes are getting less affordable for buyers all over the country — including in places where the 2024 presidential race could be decided.

But market conditions in six key swing counties aren’t quite as bad as they are in the U.S. as a whole, NBC News’ Home Buyer Index shows.

In Erie County, Pennsylvania, for example, a blue-collar area in arguably this year’s most crucial swing state, steep competition for homes pushed its overall index score to 70 on a 100-point scale last month. That’s more than 20 points higher than four years ago, but still 13 points shy of the national average, which climbed 30 points since 2020.

Free Wi-Fi? Free checked bag? Free snacks? On Spirit?

The Florida-based carrier that is practically synonymous with budget air travel in the U.S. said Tuesday that it plans to offer packages for its highest-priced tickets, wrapping in perks it used to charge for a la carte. It’s a bid to increase revenue as it struggles with the aftermath of a U.S.-blocked takeover by JetBlue, engine recalls, an oversupplied domestic market, and larger rivals who have capitalized on premium and cost-conscious travelers alike.

Starting late next month, Spirit will offer four categories of service:

“Go Big” Tickets will include a spot in one of the airline’s Big Front Seats, its roomy seats at the front of its Airbus planes. Instead of upselling travelers for the seat alone, the assignment will come with free Wi-Fi, a checked bag, one piece of cabin luggage, and, CEO Ted Christie told CNBC, “unlimited” snacks and drinks, including alcoholic beverages.

Below that package is “Go Comfy,” which will offer travelers a seat with standard legroom but a blocked middle seat for extra space. That offer also includes earlier boarding, one snack, one nonalcoholic beverage, and checked baggage and a carry-on.

“Go Savvy” fares come with either a checked bag or a carry-on.

Then there’s just “Go,” essentially Spirit’s original product, with just a seat and fees for checked bags, cabin luggage, seat selection, Wi-Fi and snacks.

The options will be available to book Aug. 16, and all four will be available on flights from Aug. 27.

Spirit is competing with larger airline rivals like United that have capitalized on cost-conscious travelers with their own bare-bones products but still offer higher-priced options like extra legroom and first class.

“What we realized now is that we were sort of ceding other markets to other airlines,” Christie said in an interview. “Now we’re saying, no, we can still do what we were doing before, but we’re also going to compete for people who are willing or want a little bit more of a premium feel and and would pay for that. They just didn’t have it on us.”

Spirit earlier this month warned of a wider-than-expected loss after nonticket revenue — what it collects in the form of fees — came in lighter than it had previously forecast. The carrier has also warned pilots about potential furloughs in the coming months.

Spirit isn’t the only carrier looking to increase its upmarket seats to attract more customers. Southwest Airlines, also under pressure to raise revenue, last week said it plans to ditch open seating and offer “premium” seats with more legroom, the biggest overhaul in the airline’s more than 50 years of flying. Frontier Airlines in March said it would start offering blocked middle seats at the front of the plane for a higher price.