Celeste M. Brecht

This year, Brecht was named co-chair of Venable's 50-lawyer California litigation group after having become an equity partner in 2019. "I like the art of persuasion," she said. "Being co-chair is like trying to herd cats and get consensus."

The Covid-19 crisis hasn't kept her home.

"I'm an extrovert, so I'm actually in the office," Brecht said in early July. "I like being in the mix, and I wasn't good at adapting to working at home. I like the separation of home life and work life. We have capped office occupancy at 20 percent, so there are five of us here, wearing masks in our common areas."

Brecht's clients include Comscore Inc., Full Circle Studies Inc., the California Stem Cell Treatment Center Inc., Arthrex Inc., the National Marrow Donor Program, Battlespace Flight Services LLC, Merck & Co., Abbott Laboratories and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

When local courts reopened June 22, chiefly for remote hearings, Brecht said, "I had a bunch of appearances scheduled. They bunched everything up. All the judges like telephonic appearances, because they and their staffs are mindful and concerned about the continuing public health risks."

In April, Brecht won dismissal with prejudice of federal and state class claims against client IronSource USA Inc., an internet advertising company. The claims were filed by the New Mexico attorney general, Hector Balderas, against multiple digital advertising networks and an app developer, citing the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and state privacy laws. State of New Mexico ex rel Balderas v. Tiny Lab Productions, 6:18-cv-00854 (D. N. Mexico, filed Sept. 11, 2018).

Other defendants included Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. The attorney general's complaint alleged the companies engaged in "surreptitious acquisition of [children's] personal information for the purposes of profiling and targeting them for commercial exploitation."

"As a society, we are trying to figure out how best to handle these privacy issues," Brecht said. "Here the AG was looking to shut down the practice of embedding ad code in games that had an audience of children, claiming that serving ads to end-users was a privacy violation. Some of the defendants--but not mine--could allegedly track players."

On April 29, 2020, U.S. District Judge Martha A. Vasquez of Santa Fe, N.M., granted the defendants' motion to dismiss all claims, holding that the attorney general had failed to allege facts showing the defendants had "actual knowledge" that the mobile gaming apps at issue were directed at children, a statutory requirement for COPPA claims. The judge also dismissed the state law claims.

"For games to be free, there has to be a way to monetize them," Brecht said.

--John Roemer