Ellis & Winters

Since this blog’s inception, we’ve primarily concentrated our posts on the law under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 75-1.1, a mainstay of business and consumer disputes in North Carolina. We’ve been gratified by the positive feedback from our readership as we write about novel developments in consumer-protection law.

With an eye toward those novel developments, we write today to announce an expansion of the blog’s substantive focus to another critical area of consumer-protection law: the law on privacy and data security. 

Indeed, privacy and data-security litigation has become one of the most concerning areas of consumer protection for corporations and their in-house counsel. Privacy and data-security litigation features many of the same characteristics as the law that governs section 75-1.1—including and especially the application of open-ended concepts of unfairness, deception, and consumer injury.

Our posts on privacy and data security will be authored by our colleague Alex Pearce. Alex has deep experience and first-rate credentials in both complex business litigation and the law on privacy and data security. A Stanford Law School graduate, Alex clerked for Judge Milton I. Shadur in federal court in Chicago, and then practiced business litigation at Winston & Strawn and Ellis & Winters. Alex later moved to SAS, where he served as the company’s privacy counsel, before re-joining Ellis & Winters this past January.

As to our schedule going forward:

• We’ll publish our posts on privacy and data-security law on the third Tuesday of each month, the first one being on March 21.

• Section 75-1.1 devotees need not worry that our new coverage will mean that we’ll cover that statute any less frequently. We’ll continue to make our regularly-scheduled section 75-1.1 posts on the second and fourth Tuesday every month.

We look forward to this next chapter in the blog’s development.   As always, we invite your ideas on topics that we should address.