Simon S. Grille 

Simon S. Grille is a partner at Girard Sharp LLP who specializes in class actions and other forms of complex civil litigation. He joined the firm in 2016.

Earlier, he’d worked elsewhere on single-plaintiff cases. “I enjoyed the positive effects of successful PI and wrongful death cases for clients who really need legal services,” Grille said. “I did a lot of asbestos work for salt-of-the-earth type guys who were sick through no fault of their own and, in some cases, the last thing they did was seek justice.”

But the work grew repetitive. “These issues had been litigated over and over and it got a little stale. So, I was drawn to class actions. There was a good balance. I was still serving average Americans, but with more complex issues involved.”

Grille is currently lead counsel in a class action that is based on a theory his firm and a few others have developed: adapting the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1980s law designed for brick-and-mortar video rental stores, to the streaming era.

“It’s an exciting hook, and we’ve gotten courts to agree that the law should apply here,” he said. The complaint alleges that the defendant, a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators, sent subscribers’ personal information and video viewing choices to Meta, Inc. without lawful consent. Stark v. Patreon, Inc., 3:22-cv-03131 (N.D. Cal., filed May 27, 2022).

The litigation is proceeding on two tracks. “In the first, we’re past the motion to dismiss stage and moving toward class certification,” Grille said.

In the second track, the defendant has challenged the VPPA on First Amendment grounds, contending that it restricts the right to speech. “We argue that data isn’t speech and there’s no restriction,” Grille said. U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero has set a hearing on that issue for October.

In December 2022, Grille settled for $50 million a five-year class action alleging defective keyboards on Apple Inc.’s MacBook laptops. In re: MacBook Keyboard Litigation, 5:18-cv-02813 (N.D. Cal., filed May 11, 2018).

Grille and colleagues fended off three motions to dismiss and gained a class certification order in the case before Apple came to the table. “We took it almost the entire distance,” he said. “Keyboards were failing and customers were upset. They decided to bargain just after we’d had a trial date set. This was a good deal for consumers.”

Grille said he’s glad he switched from single-plaintiff litigation to class actions. “It’s hard, it’s satisfying and I like the challenge.”

–John Roemer