A federal judge in San Francisco has turned down plaintiffs' request to force Google to disgorge $2.36 billion in alleged profits and to bar specific ad-related data practices, leaving intact key elements of a civil privacy judgment against the company.
The decision follows a jury verdict in September that found Google liable for collecting app activity from millions of users who had turned off a tracking setting. That jury awarded roughly $425 million in damages to the class action plaintiffs, far less than the $31 billion the plaintiffs had sought, and issued an advisory verdict indicating that disgorgement of profits was unwarranted.
In the post-trial motion, the class sought an order requiring Google to forfeit $2.36 billion in profits that they said were derived from the company's tracking of users who had disabled a particular privacy control. The plaintiffs argued they were entitled to those profits as recovery for Google's alleged improper data collection, and they further sought a permanent injunction to halt certain practices related to advertising data.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg rejected those requests. He concluded the plaintiffs had not demonstrated an entitlement to disgorgement and found their calculations of Google's alleged profits to be insufficiently supported. The judge also determined that the plaintiffs had not shown prospective, irreparable harm that would justify imposing a permanent injunction to prevent Google from collecting account-related or other data tied to its ad systems.
Google had urged the court not to add the disgorgement request to the jury's September verdict. The company warned that an order barring collection of account-related data would "cripple" an analytics service used by millions of app developers, a contention referenced by the court in assessing the practical consequences of an injunction.
Separately, the judge denied Google's motion to decertify the class. The certified class includes 98 million users and 174 million devices, and Seeborg declined to undo that certification following the jury verdict.
The company has denied any wrongdoing and indicated it will appeal the September verdict. Plaintiffs noted following the ruling that Google has not altered its privacy disclosures or its data collection practices despite the jury's finding of liability.
Legal teams and case information
For the plaintiffs: David Boies and Mark Mao of Boies Schiller Flexner; Bill Carmody and Shawn Rabin of Susman Godfrey; and John Yanchunis and Ryan McGee of Morgan & Morgan.
For Google: Michael Attanasio, Benedict Hur and Simona Agnolucci of Cooley.
The case is Rodriguez v. Google LLC, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:20-cv-04688.