Ann Marie Mortimer 

Ann Marie Mortimer is the founder and managing partner of Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP’s Los Angeles office and co-head of the firm’s commercial litigation practice. She specializes in cases involving data security, the environment and false advertising claims.

Her clients include Meta Platforms, Inc., Bath & Body Works Inc., Walmart Inc., Marathon Petroleum Corp., The Neiman Marcus Group LLC, Yahoo subsidiary Flurry, MGM Resorts International and WhatsApp.

“There are plenty of people smarter than me, but you have to go pretty far to outwork me,” Mortimer said of her jammed schedule.

Last year she won a Daily Journal Top Verdict award for client Walmart Inc., attaining dismissal in an early, precedent-setting class action test of the new plaintiff-friendly California Consumer Privacy Act that greenlights private suits over data breaches.

Although hackers accessed personal identifying information regarding two million online Walmart customers, Mortimer successfully argued a dearth of evidence, lack of compensable harm and the retroactive nature of the complaint. Gardiner v. Walmart Inc., 4:20-cv-04618 (N.D. Cal., filed July 10, 2020).

There was no appeal. “The plaintiffs did a walk away from that one,” Mortimer said. “We knew there’d be early border skirmishes over how the law applies.”

This year she again won dismissal of a potential class action filed against her installment lender client after it announced that a vendor shared credit card transaction information with other financial institutions. The plaintiff alleged the client’s failure to maintain security practices violated the CCPA and other laws. Henig v. OneMain Financial Group LLC, CVR12204289 (Riverside Co. Super. Ct., filed Oct. 5, 2022).

“It was the breach that didn’t happen, and after we explained to the plaintiffs that there wasn’t the type of harm you’d typically expect in such cases, they voluntarily dismissed it,” Mortimer said.

She’s defending Marathon Petroleum Corp. in 60 toxic tort suits alleging personal injury and property diminution from alleged exposure to hydrogen sulfide and odors in the Dominguez Channel incident in Carson in October 2021. Alvarez et al. v. Prologis, Inc., 21STCV38929 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Oct. 21, 2021).

“This one is in its early stages, and we are defending Marathon vigorously on the basis that the odor is unrelated to our client,” Mortimer said.

In addition to her law degree from UC Berkeley School of Law, Mortimer has a master of political science degree from the London School of Economics.

“My thesis was on Plato,” she said. “I used to joke that in law school, I kept a copy of ‘The Republic’ on my desk and — you know how competitive law students are — it led to a run on the book at the bookstore.”

She added that a philosophical background is useful for helping to think critically, “though my son would say that I can turn a chicken-cross-the-road joke into a lesson on perseverance.”

—John Roemer