Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout-Outs

Winn Allen, T.J. McCarrick, Jordan Greene, Saunders McElroy, Laura Vartain and Bethany Christa Lobo received a shout-out for The American Lawyer Litigation Daily's "Litigator of the Week" for their work for Meta Platforms and WhatsApp.

"... Shout-out to a Kirkland & Ellis team representing Meta Platforms Inc. and its WhatsApp subsidiary in a proposed class action claiming WhatsApp messages are not encrypted. The plaintiffs—WhatsApp users from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa—cited anonymous whistleblowers in claiming that the defendants can access WhatsApp users’ communications despite representing that they are private and fully encrypted. Last week, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, holding that while the plaintiffs need not identify the whistleblowers themselves, they “need to provide some facts supporting an inference that the whistleblowers have firsthand knowledge or some other reliable basis for their accusations.” The Kirkland team includes Winn Allen, T.J. McCarrick, Jordan Greene, Saunders McElroy, Laura Vartain and Bethany Christa Lobo."