Today, the Legal Intelligencer announced the 2019 Professional Excellence Award winners, highlighting the great work and achievements across the full breadth of the Pennsylvania legal community and naming Gary Lynch, a partner of Lynch Carpenter, Attorney of the Year Finalist.
In the 2018 landmark cybersecurity and data privacy case, Lynch successfully argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that companies have a common-law duty to protect their electronically stored employee data. The high court’s ruling reversed two controversial lower court rulings that had tossed out a lawsuit against UPMC over a data breach that exposed the personal information of tens of thousands of current and former employees.
Earlier in 2018, Lynch was appointed co-lead counsel of national multidistrict litigation brought by over 70 financial institutions against Equifax, related to the company’s 2017 data breach.
Lynch is helping to shape the emerging area of data breach and privacy law through his work on several cases over the past few years, including data breach litigation involving Target, Home Depot, UPMC and Wendy’s. He was co-lead counsel for the financial institutions suing Home Depot, following the home improvement retailer’s 2014 data breach and on the five-person executive committee overseeing the prosecution of nationwide litigation against Target for its 2013 breach.
In addition to his work in the cyber security arena, Lynch continued his consumer protection and employee wage and hour practice in 2018, serving as co-lead for plaintiffs in a trial against the Penthouse Club in Philadelphia and securing a verdict of $4.5 Million on behalf of a class of exotic dancers who were misclassified as independent contractors by the night club.