Commercial Litigation Update

California courts are increasingly handling class action lawsuits alleging that cookies and other web technologies violate privacy laws by collecting personal data without consent. A key issue in these cases is whether California courts can exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state companies operating location-neutral websites.

A recent ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is raising the stakes for any business that operates a website collecting user data. In Briskin v. Shopify, decided in April 2025, the court held that California courts can exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state company—Shopify—for allegedly collecting personal data from a California resident without proper disclosure or consent. This decision signals a significant shift in how courts view digital jurisdiction in the age of online commerce and widespread data collection.

New episode of our video podcast, Speaking of Litigation: When it comes to dietary supplement class actions, there’s a little less class and a lot more action.

In this episode of Speaking of Litigation, Epstein Becker Green litigators Teddy McCormick, Jack Wenik, and Robert Lufrano explore the litigious minefield of class action battles, particularly focusing on the challenges faced by companies amid the proliferation of legal opportunists and lawsuits based on U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning letters.

From navigating consumer protection statutes to deciphering FDA actions, our panelists discuss the legal intricacies shaping the dietary supplement industry's future. Tune in for an engaging conversation that unpacks the intersection of law, regulation, and commerce in the realm of dietary supplements.

Do plaintiffs’ attorneys smell blood in the water? A raft of class-action suits recently initiated against dietary supplement manufacturers, alleging deceptive practices in the sale of fish oil products, suggests that they might.

These suits, filed in California federal courts (a favorite jurisdiction for the plaintiffs’ bar), are nearly identical in that they allege that the manufacturers’ fish oil products do not actually contain fish oil. To date, plaintiffs’ class action lawyers have already targeted well-known dietary supplement products, such as Dr. Tobias ...

Creative and aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers are forever on the hunt for new theories under which to bring potentially lucrative class action lawsuits utilizing plaintiff-friendly state consumer protection statutes (with California being the most favored forum). The dietary supplement industry has been in the plaintiffs bar’s cross-hairs for more than a decade now. As the case law has evolved and developed, supplement companies have had notable success fighting these suits. Just last week, Judge Miller in the Southern District of California tossed a proposed class action ...

On September 6, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California preliminarily approved a settlement in Harvey v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. The significance of the result is two-fold. First, substantively, it is a reminder to financial services firms of potential liability under California labor law when advisors are required to pay for business expenses. Second, procedurally, the court’s approval of the settlement is edifying on the subject of parallel class actions.

In the Harvey case, plaintiffs challenged Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s ...