California Judge Appoints Class-Action Attorney Adam J. Levitt, of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLC, as Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel in Zynga Privacy Litigation
San Jose, CA – December 20, 2010 – In a decision following contested motion practice, Judge James Ware, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, appointed Adam J. Levitt, a partner in the Chicago office of national class action law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLC as Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel in the recently filed class action lawsuit against Zynga Game Network, Inc. In that same Order, Judge Ware also appointed Jonathan Shub, of Seeger Weiss LLP and Michael Aschenbrener, of Edelson McGuire LLC, as Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel along with Mr. Levitt.
Messrs. Levitt, Shub and Aschenbrener will direct the prosecution of the named plaintiffs’ and the other proposed class members’ claims against Zynga, alleging that Zynga sold, collected, and/or transmitted the Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) of tens of millions of Americans in violation of both federal and state law, as well as in violation of Zynga’s own privacy policy.
In appointing Messrs. Levitt, Shub and Aschenbrener, as Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel, Judge Ware recognized that those lawyers were “pioneers in the electronic privacy class action field, having litigated some of the largest consumer class actions in the country on this issue,” and further recognized that “the nomination of the Wolf, Haldenstein, Adler, Freeman and Herz, Seeger Weiss and Edelson McGuire, LLC is appropriate given the firms’ extensive experience in privacy litigation.”
“We are pleased that Judge Ware appointed our proposed leadership group,” Mr. Levitt stated. “We believe that our group brings to this litigation an enormous amount of legal talent and experience in the electronic privacy class action field – factors we are confident will be brought to bear in successfully litigating this case against Zynga and obtaining a favorable result for the proposed class.”
Mr. Levitt and his law firm have a long history of leading complex class action cases, including many of the seminal cases in the electronic privacy class action field, including In re Amazon.Com, Inc. / Alexa Internet Privacy Litigation, In re RealNetworks, Inc. Privacy Litigation, In re DoubleClick, Inc. Privacy Litigation, and Chance v. Avenue A, Inc. Several of these cases are the key cases in the Internet privacy field and have been instrumental in creating the jurisprudential framework for this type of class and direct litigation.
