Kathryn E. Cahoy 

Kathryn E. (Kate) Cahoy is a partner at Covington & Burling LLP specializing in the defense of class action disputes involving privacy, antitrust and consumer protection claims. She’s been with the firm since 2014.

After graduating from Yale Law School, she clerked for Hon. Allison H. Eid on the Colorado Supreme Court and for Hon. Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

“My judges both were wonderful mentors who gave a great start to my legal career,” Cahoy said. “They taught me about the thoughtful application of the law and the importance of clear legal writing.”

She began a sideline in pro bono work for military veterans in law school and has since obtained a precedential win before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims for a class of veterans challenging unreasonable delays in the VA appeals process.

“Covington has been very supportive, and I’ve been able to combine my class action work with the National Veterans Legal Services Program to get results,” she said.

Litigating class actions appeals to her, she added, because “the procedural aspects of class certification add another layer of strategy to the merits arguments. That makes it all more challenging.”

Cahoy co-led a team of Covington lawyers that secured multiple wins for Facebook, Inc. in a class action filed under the Unfair Competition Law. The plaintiffs alleged the social networking firm misrepresented that advertisers would not be charged for clicks on their ads from fake accounts. They sought to recover refunds for more than one billion ad impressions. dotStrategy Co. v. Facebook Inc., 3:20-cv-00170 (N.D. Cal., filed Jan. 8, 2020).

She and her team defeated class certification by arguing successfully that although the lead plaintiff claimed that Facebook pages contained misrepresentations, there was no evidence that class members had seen the pages. The team then won summary judgment regarding the remaining plaintiff because there was no evidence it had been charged for any invalid clicks.

When the plaintiffs challenged those rulings at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a panel affirmed the district court. dotStrategy Co. v. Meta Platforms Inc., 21-17056 (9th Cir., op. filed Nov. 28, 2022).

Cahoy said the rulings will have important consequences for other technology companies facing UCL misrepresentation claims, particularly those regarding invalid ad traffic. The outcome has already been cited by defendants, including Google LLC, LinkedIn Corp. and Nintendo Co. Ltd., in at least seven other cases.

“It’s helpful precedent, and we celebrate these wins,” Cahoy said.

She co-led a team that successfully opposed cert and preserved a 9th Circuit win for the National Football League over an antitrust challenge to the Raiders’ relocation to Las Vegas. City of Oakland v. Oakland Raiders, 21-1243 (S. Ct., cert denied Oct. 3, 2022).

“We argued that this case was a bad vehicle for the court to consider the underlying question at issue,” Cahoy said.

—John Roemer