Litigation Daily Spotlights Akin Gump CCPA Report, Interviews Cyber Practice Heads Natasha Kohne, Michelle Reed

In its article “What’s Up With the 60% Jump In Cases Brought Under California’s Privacy Law?,” Litigation Daily featured the firm’s new CCPA Litigation Report – 2021 Trends and Developments and interviewed Akin Gump cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice heads Natasha Kohne and Michelle Reed.

Among the interview highlights:

• 60% increase in CCPA claims: “I think what’s interesting about this statistic is that initially in 2020 you saw a large percentage of CCPA cases being filed where there was just a simple violation of the CCPA which was clearly reserved only for attorney general enforcement. Or we saw cases being filed where the CCPA was being used as a basis for another private right of action, and that’s also clearly prohibited by the CCPA. Even with many fewer of those types of cases being filed in 2021, we still saw this uptick in cases being filed. The big headline, I think, is that we saw a large number of cases being filed in the traditional data breach context. So the CCPA private right of action kind of settled down to the place where it actually should be.” (Kohne)
• “Concrete harm” and TransUnion v. Ramirez: “I think you’re seeing some courts even questioning whether they can approve settlements because of the Ramirez decision. So I definitely think Ramirez is going to have a really significant impact here, likely very favorable for defendants.” (Reed)
• Threat of statutory damages: “I think that the threat of statutory damages provides a very strong incentive for companies to settle…I don’t think that that is the only reason why you’re not seeing things go to class certification. I think the cost of litigation under today’s billable rates and the cost of discovery in general always incentivize a reasonable settlement if one can be reached prior to class cert. The discovery costs very easily go into the millions of dollars.” (Reed)
• CCPA cases to watch: “Certainly the most interesting CCPA cases are really the service provider cases where we’ve received a number of decisions already. The number of vendor breaches or service provider breaches continues to increase…The service providers are actually arguing that they’re not liable under the private right of action, and certainly the statute itself seems to suggest that.” (Kohne)

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