The editorial staff of the California Daily Journal have named Lieff Cabraser partner Michael W. Sobol, along with Eric Gibbs of the Gibbs Law Group and Eve Cervantez of Altshuler Berzon, as 2019 California Lawyer of the Year award recipients for their work on the In re Anthem Data Breach Litigation. The annual CLAY Awards are considered by the California legal community as one of the most prestigious awards, given to “outstanding attorneys whose extraordinary work has had a major impact on the law.”

In late 2018, Northern District Judge Lucy H. Koh issued an order granting final approval to a $115 million settlement of the class action lawsuit filed on behalf of consumers against Anthem, Inc. over data breach and hacking originally revealed in early 2015. The intrusion into Anthem’s system, which occurred after what plaintiffs claimed was Anthem’s failure to implement and abide by standard security protocols, resulted in the exposure of identifiable personal information and health information belonging to nearly 80 million of Anthem’s members. The deadline to claim compensation for out-of-pocket costs will be August 16, 2019. More information about the settlement, and instructions for filing a claim, are available on the settlement website, at databreach-settlement.com.

About Michael Sobol

As the chair of Lieff Cabraser’s Consumer Protection practice group for the past sixteen years and chair of the firm’s Cybersecurity & Data Privacy group since its inception in 2016, Michael W. Sobol leads novel and challenging consumer protection class action lawsuits of first impression. Within the last few years, Michael’s cases have recovered over one billion dollars and have reformed the business practices for the benefit of tens of millions consumers nationwide, including a $203 million judgment for restitution in a class action suit filed on behalf of a class of over one million California consumers defrauded by Wells Fargo by its improper accounting of debit card transactions.

A two-time California Daily Journal “Top Cybersecurity Lawyer,” the National Law Journal selected Michael in 2017 as a “Cybersecurity Law Trailblazer” for his significant ongoing efforts “in the fight against criminal cyber activity and towards adding much needed layers of data security in an increasingly digital world of commerce.” Law360 also honored him as a 2017 “MVP for Cybersecurity and Data Privacy.”

Michael currently represents consumers asserting that Facebook violated their privacy rights by scanning private email messages, and residents of Detroit, Michigan in a class action lawsuit against Morgan Stanley for actively ensuring the proliferation of high-cost, high-risk mortgage loans to bundle and sell mortgage-backed securities to investors.

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