Justina K. (Tina) Sessions

Sessions is a partner in Wilson Sonsini’s competition and antitrust practice, defending clients like Google LLC and Qualcomm Inc. in significant technology class actions over digital advertising and mobile phones. She moved to the firm in 2020 after working at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP; earlier, she clerked for the chief judge of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was selected as a global fellow by the Federal Circuit Bar Association.

Litigation and trying cases in courtrooms were her early passions, she said, and the antitrust field soon became her area of focus. “It’s an area where the skills of a good lawyer are really needed to tell stories that cut through complexities of markets, technology and the law. The opportunity of applying trial lawyer techniques in antitrust was very appealing.”

Sessions added that she also got a boost from Keker antitrust and patent law partner Paula L. Blizzard, who is now a California supervising deputy attorney general. “She was a fabulous mentor, an antitrust lawyer who looked like me, a strong woman in a traditionally male-dominated area of law.”

In a pending antitrust case, Sessions co-leads Google’s defense in a series of class and individual actions concerning the search giant’s digital advertising technology. The cases are a major front in a larger campaign of antitrust actions targeting leading additional technology companies such as Facebook. Sessions’ team won some early battles, including a successful motion to dismiss a complaint brought by one class of online advertisers. In re: Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation, 5:20-cv-03556 (N.D. Cal., filed May 27, 2020).

So many cases have now been filed that in August the federal courts’ multidistrict litigation panel consolidated 19 of them, including the Northern District case, in New York. In re: Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation, 1:21-cv-07001 (S.D. N.Y., filed Aug. 19, 2021).

The suits claim Google has monopolized or suppressed competition in online ads in violation of federal antitrust laws. Sessions said the plaintiffs’ attacks on her client have been unrelenting. “The Texas attorney general said the goal is to break up Google. A media group said they want to make this bigger than opioids. Those efforts are building up an atmosphere around this case with potential significant remedies that could be incredibly disruptive to the online ad space.”

Meanwhile, her defense of Qualcomm against a claim by smartphone users alleging $5 billion in damages is at the federal appellate stage on Sessions’ appeal of a class certification order. She won a parallel antitrust case brought by the FTC, in which a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Qualcomm’s business practices were not anti-competitive. FTC v. Qualcomm, 19-16122 (9th Cir., op. filed Aug. 11, 2020).

The class action is a follow-on to the FTC case, “and the 9th Circuit found the FTC’s theory deficient,” Sessions said.

-- John Roemer