Ann Marie Mortimer

Ann Marie Mortimer is at the forefront of complex litigation as a partner in Hunton and Andrew Kurth's Los Angeles office and head of the firm's commercial litigation practice.

The combination of her legal technical expertise and pragmatism ensures clients return to her repeatedly to handle their most challenging class action, commercial and data breach matters.

Over the last year alone, she has doubled her caseload for Facebook (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) and Verizon.

Mortimer won a pivotal victory for Walmart when the court dismissed a data breach class action lawsuit in its entirety and with prejudice. Lavarious Gardiner v. Walmart Inc., (Case No. 4:20-cv-04618- JSW, N.D. Cal.)

"Generally, California is kind of an incubator for emerging legal issues, in all areas, but certainly in privacy, cybersecurity data and emerging areas of consumer liability," she said. "The adoption of the California Consumer Privacy Act, called the CCPA, was a watershed moment because it is the first, and arguably most influential state-level sprivacy law in the United States. Gardiner v. Walmart was one of the very first cases to test the boundaries of the CCPA, and in that case the Court held that consistent with the plain language of the statute, the CCPA is not retroactive, and so dismissed the complaint with prejudice."

The plaintiff claimed hackers accessed Personally Identifiable Information (PII) associated with over two million online Walmart shoppers as a result of an alleged data breach of Walmart's computer network. Given the substantial number of customers who shop on Walmart.com every week, as well as the CCPA's statutory penalties, which range from $100 to $750 per consumer per incident, statutory damages could have been substantial.

"It's important because it's an early case and because the contours of the CCPA are very much being tested under the crucible of litigation," Mortimer said. "Since the CCPA is the first broad privacy statute adopted in California, and the states have a patchwork quilt of different privacy laws, we expect that this will continue to be a statute that gets a lot of attention from a litigation perspective."

Mortimer has long served on the Board of Trustees of the Children's Burn Foundation (CBF), which provides financial support and arranges medical services for critically burned children in the United States and abroad. Concerned with the full recovery of child burn survivors, CBF addresses not only their physical needs, but their psychological, emotional, and social recovery as well. CBF provided services for 85,000 children and families during the past fiscal year.

- Douglas Saunders