Ekwan E. Rhow

Ekwan E. Rhow is a principal at Bird Marella. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he joined the firm 29 years ago, joined the masthead in 2013 and — come Feb. 1, 2024 — will advance in a rebranding that will trim the name to Bird, Marella, Rhow, Lincenberg, Drooks & Nessim LLP.

“I’ll move up to third,” Rhow said. “It’s a refresh that we’re doing quietly to achieve a more efficient, more compact name.”

Rhow specializes in high-stakes trials, complex bet-the-company business disputes and class actions.

He’s recently doubled down on a $92 million consumer privacy class action settlement with TikTok Inc. — one of the largest such deals in the data privacy field — with a series of follow-on class actions seeing more than $100 billion in damages.

Rhow and his team are spearheading national class actions in federal district courts in California, Washington state and New York that challenge the data privacy policies and interception of private data by companies such as Microsoft Corp., Capital One Financial Corp. and Blue Shield. One example: Saeedy et al. v. Microsoft Corp., 2:23-cv-01104 (W.D. Wash., filed July 21, 2023).

The complaint contends that versions of Microsoft’s Edge browser are programmed to “surreptitiously intercept, collect and send to defendant a wide range of private data relating to users’ internet browsing activities” even though users have set it to “private” browsing mode, allegedly resulting in violations of federal and state laws.

“So far, we’ve survived a motion to dismiss,” Rhow said. “Our winning point was that none of the individual plaintiffs had any knowledge that the defendant is doing this.”

In the earlier class action against TikTok, Rhow was appointed co-lead counsel and negotiated the big $92 million deal. His clients, many of whom are minors, claimed TikTok wrongfully collected their biometric information and private data in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the federal Video Privacy Protection Act and other statutes. In re: TikTok Inc. Consumer Privacy Litigation, 1:20-cv-04699 (N.D. Ill., filed Aug. 11, 2020).

In granting almost $30 million in fees following the settlement, U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee of Chicago credited Rhow and Bird Marella with being one of the first two firms “to begin investigating the data privacy allegations against TikTok in January 2018 and … the first to file a complaint against TikTok.”

It pays to be first. “We filed this lawsuit before anyone else did and before TikTok was in the national spotlight,” Rhow said.

—John Roemer