Daniel J. McLoon

Credit reporting agencies, utility companies and health care entities are some of the clients who rely on McLoon for guidance with cybersecurity, privacy and data protection matters.

He was part of a legal team that convinced a 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel to ax a $12 million class action judgment against a unit of Experian PLC, a consumer credit reporting agency and one of McLoon’s longtime clients.

The appeal stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2011 where a roughly 69,000-member class alleged that Experian willfully violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by listing a defunct credit card company as a source of information for credit reports. A district court agreed and concluded that Experian willfully violated the act, which gives an individual the right to receive the sources of information for a credit report. The lower court had awarded an $11.7 million judgment. Dreher v. Experian Information Solutions Inc. et al., 3:11-cv-00624 (E.D. Va., filed Sept. 21, 2011).

“Experian put the name of the source that they thought would be most helpful to consumers,” McLoon said. “It turns out that the name of the company that was reporting the information to Experian was an outside servicing company that was not the name Experian was disclosing.

“We felt it wasn’t a violation of the law because when consumers were reaching out about something they didn’t think was accurate, they were actually connected to the person they needed to be connected to and no one was harmed.”

A three-judge panel of the appeals court said in a published opinion that simply being denied access to information that is required to be disclosed by law does not amount to an injury that is grounds. The 4th Circuit cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo v. Robins, explaining that Experian’s failure to provide the source of trade line information must cause a “real” harm with an adverse effect. The panel found that the plaintiff, and thus the class, did not demonstrate an injury-in-fact to satisfy the statute. Dreher v. Experian Information Solutions Inc. et al., 15-2119 (4th Cir. May 11, 2017).

In addition to maintaining a robust clientele, McLoon also leads Jones Day’s worldwide cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice.

“I get to lead a team of really incredible lawyers all over the world,” McLoon said. “It’s a great source of personal pride to me that that we’ve been able to help our clients navigate these issues and mitigate the risk to these individuals that were affected.”

— Melanie Brisbon