Photo of Wystan Ackerman

Wystan Ackerman is a partner in Robinson+Cole’s Insurance + Reinsurance Group and handles a diverse range of property insurance litigation, including large business interruption cases, class actions, other complex litigation, and appeals. He also has substantial experience representing insurance companies in putative class actions involving homeowners’ insurance coverage and market conduct/claim-handling practices. He has been prominently involved in high-profile property insurance litigation concerning the September 11th catastrophe and Hurricane Katrina, and Chinese-made drywall. Based in the insurance capital of Hartford, Connecticut, Wystan writes the blog Insurance Class Actions Insider, which was selected by Lexis Nexis as a top insurance blog for 2011.

Wystan grew up in Deep River, Connecticut, a small town on the west side of the Connecticut River in the south central part of the state. He always had strong interests in history, politics and baseball and his heroes growing up were Abraham Lincoln and Wade Boggs (at that time the third baseman for the Boston Red Sox). Wystan says it was his early fascination with Lincoln that drove him to practice law. As a high school senior, he was one of Connecticut’s two delegates to the U.S. Senate Youth Program, which further solidified his interest in law and government. He went on to Bowdoin College, where he wrote for the Bowdoin Orient and majored in government. After Bowdoin, he went on to Columbia Law School. He also interned in the chambers of then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Second Circuit. Wystan graduated from Columbia in 2001, then worked at Skadden Arps in Boston before returning to Connecticut and joining Robinson+Cole.

When Wystan’s not at his desk, flying around the country trying to save insurance companies from the plaintiffs’ bar, or attending a conference on class actions or insurance litigation he often can be found watching “Dora the Explorer” or reading or playing whiffleball with his young daughter, helping his wife with her business, Option Realty, reading a book about history or politics, or watching the Boston Red Sox.

Read Wystan’s rc.com bio.

In an order issued on October 16, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States v. Microsoft Corporation, a case with potentially far-reaching implications for the privacy of electronic data maintained by technology companies across the globe.

The case, which Robinson+Cole has previously discussed here, here, and here, arises from a warrant obtained by the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Stored Communications Act (SCA).[1] The SCA was enacted in 1986 to protect the privacy of electronic communications, including by extending privacy protections to electronic records analogous to those afforded under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[2] In relevant part, the SCA requires a governmental entity in most instances to secure a warrant in accordance with the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to compel disclosure of electronic communications stored by a service provider.[3]
Continue Reading Supreme Court to Hear Microsoft Emails Case

Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, No. 14-857. The question presented was whether an unaccepted offer of full relief on the named plaintiff’s individual claim will render a putative class action moot. The answer is “no,” according to a 5-3 opinion by Justice Ginsburg (with a separate concurrence by Justice