When Routine Marketing Triggers a Class Action: Defending Subject-Line, Tracking-Pixel, and Video-Privacy Claims

Ian M. Ross, Partner | Sidley Austin LLP

Ian M. Ross is a Partner at Sidley Austin LLP and a Co-Leader of the firm’s Consumer Class Actions practice, based in the firm’s Miami and Chicago offices. Ian is an experienced trial lawyer who represents clients in business disputes, commercial and securities litigation, nationwide class actions, and government investigations. He regularly handles high-stakes litigation matters across the country and is often asked to defend his clients in class actions involving novel privacy and statutory theories. In recent years, he has written and spoken extensively on emerging theories of liability under national and state privacy and consumer protection laws.

• Education & Credentials

Ian earned his J.D., cum laude, from Duke University School of Law (2005), where he served as Executive Editor of the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, and his B.A. with honors in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University (2002). He is admitted to practice in Florida and Illinois, and to the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts of Florida and the Northern District of Illinois.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ian is ranked by Chambers USA for his Florida practice in Securities Litigation (Band 1; 2022–2026) and in General Commercial Litigation (2022–2026) and has been recognized in The American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” publication three times in the last two years. He is ranked in The Best Lawyers in America for Litigation – Securities (2026), Florida Legal Elite (2023–2025), Florida Super Lawyers (2023–2026), and Legal 500 United States, and is AV-Preeminent-rated by Martindale-Hubbell (2025). He received the Daily Business Review’s Florida Legal Award for Social Impact (2021) for his pro bono representation of detainees and asylum seekers.

• Professional Involvement

Ian serves as Vice-President/President Elect of the Americans for Immigrant Justice Board, is a member of the Florida Bar Association Cybersecurity and Privacy Law Committee and Business Law Committee and serves on the Regional Board of Read to a Child, South Florida. He serves on the editorial board of the Enhanced Scrutiny blog, where the Sidley team provides timely updates and analysis on M&A and corporate governance matters from the Delaware courts. His analysis has been featured in the Florida Bar Journal, the Journal of Health and Life Sciences Law, Law360, and the Daily Business Review.

• Experience

Ian has served as lead counsel and represented national companies in more than 20 national class actions arising out of federal and state consumer protection statutes, including retail, telecommunications, online retailing, food and beverage, sports and fitness, and home appliances. His successes include defeating class certification in a national class action brought against a sports and fitness company, prevailing on motions to dismiss standing and jurisdictional issues, and winning summary judgment in TCPA class actions. He has also represented corporations, directors and officers, and accounting firms in federal securities class actions and SEC, DOJ, and FDIC investigations involving insider trading, misappropriation, fraud, internal control audits, and financial restatements.

Justin Donoho, Special Counsel | Duane Morris LLP

Justin Donoho is Special Counsel at Duane Morris LLP in the firm’s Chicago office and a member of the Workplace Class Action Group. He has defended companies faced with high-stakes, complex litigation matters for fifteen years, regularly defending class actions alleging cybersecurity incidents, data privacy violations, and other issues involving information technology and seeking millions or billions of dollars. With a deep background in information technology, Justin has successfully litigated cybersecurity and data privacy issues under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the California Information Privacy Act (CIPA), the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA), the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and other various statutes and common laws.

• Education & Credentials

Justin earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (2009) and his B.S. in Computer Engineering, with highest honors, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1999). He is admitted to practice in Illinois and New York, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and AI Governance Professional (AIGP).

• Recognition & Leadership

Justin clerked for the Honorable William J. Bauer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (2009–2010).

• Professional Involvement

Justin is a frequent author and presenter on data privacy, cybersecurity, AI, and class action litigation. He has authored “Recent Precedent May Aid In Defending Ad Tech Class Actions” in Law360 (September 2025), “CIPA May Not Be Necessary To Protect Ad Tech Plaintiffs” in Law360 (June 2025), and “Gen AI Class Action Key Decisions and Trends in 2025” in The Legal Intelligencer (November 2025), and has presented at The Sedona Conference Working Group 11 Annual and Midyear Meetings (2024–2026).

• Experience

Justin leads case teams from complaint to resolution, has first- and second-chaired trials and mediations, and has defended numerous AdTech, BIPA, GIPA, VPPA, ECPA, and wiretap class actions. Representative matters include Peterson v. Learfield Communications, LLC (VPPA class action), T.D. v. Piedmont Healthcare (complete dismissal of wiretap class action), and Bell v. Marriott International (class action involving alleged cybertheft of hundreds of millions of customer records). Before law school, he served as a manager and consultant to large international organizations’ IT departments.

SESSION 1 – Plaintiff-Side Digital Marketing Class Actions | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Walk through the plaintiffs’ bar playbook across Washington CEMA post-Brown v. Old Navy, Florida FEMCA copycat filings, California CIPA wiretap and pen-register theories on Meta Pixel and session-replay tools, the VPPA circuit split, and per-violation damages math.

BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

SESSION 2 – Defending ECPA, CIPA, VPPA and Other AdTech Class Actions | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

Deploy the defensive and preventive toolkit for AdTech class actions, including statutory pixel defenses, common-law defenses, Article III standing considerations, marketing-stack audits, consent architecture, vendor contract drafting, and cross-functional compliance build and rapid-response playbooks.