Daniel S. Robinson

Mass Tort, Environmental & Data Breach Litigation

Robinson has represented plaintiffs in many mass tort cases, including playing a key role on the team that negotiated the $800 million settlement for the 4,000 victims of the Rout 91 Harvest Music Festival shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.

Since the mid-2000s, he also represented plaintiffs in more than two dozen data breach lawsuits, in particular winning a record-setting $28 million settlement in 2015 from a large nonprofit hospital system for exposing data of about 31,000 patients. St Joseph Health System Medical Information Cases, JCCP (O.C. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 12, 2012).

Currently, Robinson is heavily involved in the litigation against Yahoo! That resulted in a $117.5 million settlement, one of the largest such deals in U.S. history. The settlement is now on appeal. In Re: Yahoo! Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, 5:16-md-02752 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 7, 2016).

Robinson also is on the plaintiff’s steering committee in the class action just certified last month against Marriott In Re: Marriott International Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, 8:19-md002879 (D. Md., filed Feb. 6, 2019).

The litigation that is taking much of his time currently, however, deals with leaking chemicals, not leaked data. Robinson represents a dozen local cities and water districts suing DuPont and 3M to pay for remediation of PFAS chemicals. Those so-called “forever chemicals” are in products such as Teflon, Gortex, firefighting foams and stain-resistant carpeting. They never break down and may cause cancer and inflammation as they build up in the body.

“It’s pernicious stuff,” he said.

He represents the city of Corona against the two main manufacturers of PFAS in Riverside Superior Court. He also represents the California local governments in multidistrict litigation pending in South Carolina. In Re Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, 52:18-mn-02879 (D. So.C., filed Dec. 8, 2018).

This year, Robinson has one other task keeping him busy. He is the president of the Orange County Bar Association which hosted its annual Judges Night event in April. “It felt a little bit like we were all back to pre-covid days,” he said.

– Don DeBenedictis