Michael G. Rhodes

As the global chair of Cooley’s cyber/data/privacy practice, Rhodes has one of the most active defense-side privacy class action practices in the country. In the last year alone, he negotiated five settlements worth more than $50 million each.

He also regularly defends banks and other clients in cyber breach class actions. He’s representing Google in several class actions over how it uses advertising related data, he said.

Rhodes began in the field over 15 years ago defending Google and Facebook when the companies were young. The practice area was new and a privacy class action was also exotic.

“The big difference today is that every company has reams and reams of data from groups of people,” he said.

Further, new industries are burgeoning, such as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and blockchain systems.

“My last trial involved virtual reality,” Rhodes said, providing another example.

In October, he successfully defended Facebook and the creator of the Oculus Rift headset in an in-person jury trial brought by a competitor claiming rights to the device. “We won across the board,” he said. Total Recall Technologies v Luckey, 3:15-cv-02281 (C.D. Cal., filed May 20, 2015).

He also defended Facebook in a privacy class action involving its tag suggestions and facial recognition technology, the first case filed under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. With a potential exposure to the company of $47 billion, it was seen as the largest privacy class action in U.S. history, and it ended last spring with the largest cash settlement ever for a privacy case — $650 million. Rhodes said Facebook brought him in to try the case just 37 days before trial was to start and he then negotiated the settlement. In re: Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 3:15-cv-03747 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 17, 2015).

In November, Rhodes obtained preliminary approval of a $56 million settlement in a privacy class action brought against financial services company Plaid Inc., alleging it accessed and sold banking data of customers using Venmo and similar apps. In re: Plaid Inc. Privacy Litigation, 4:20-cv-03056 (N.D. Cal., May 4, 2020).

The difficulty with the case was that the class potentially contained 10 million to 100 million people. At that size, “the incentives to litigate through trial are challenging at best for companies because the amount of liability they face is crippling,” Rhodes said.

Over the last several years, he also has been defending Walmart, Costco and other companies accused of wiretapping through the “session replay” technology in their websites, which records users’ mouse movements and clicks. He has won nearly all of them on motions to dismiss, he said.

“This is why I like the area because you’re always dealing with new and disruptive business models and technologies and … with these older, antiquated privacy laws.”

- Don Debenedictis