E. Michelle Drake

The Envelope Was the Breach

A data breach does not always begin with code. In Beckett v. Aetna, customers alleged that the words “HIV Medications” could be seen through the window of envelopes mailed to them. Berger Montague served as co-lead counsel in the consolidated privacy litigation. The court approved a settlement requiring Aetna to pay $17,162,000, with automatic payments for class members and a process for claims involving additional financial or non-financial harm.

The alleged disclosure did not depend on someone taking data from a server and selling it. The information had been placed inside ordinary correspondence, positioned so that someone outside the envelope could read it. That mechanism connects privacy law to Drake’s credit-reporting work: information can injure a person when it is exposed to the wrong audience, when a database attaches it to the wrong identity, or when an institution acts on a conclusion the underlying facts do not support.

When the Database Names the Wrong Person

Drake began her career as an Atlanta public defender, trying serious felony matters and representing people facing the death penalty. She earned a B.A. in government from Harvard College, an M.Sc. in sociology from Oxford University, and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School. After moving to Minnesota, she built a consumer department at a class-action firm before joining Berger Montague in 2016 to open its Minneapolis office.

Her Fair Credit Reporting Act cases examine how a matching rule becomes a decision about a person. Drake led Rodriguez v. National Credit Center, which alleged that consumers seeking vehicle financing were inaccurately identified as possible matches to a federal sanctions list and ended in a $30 million settlement. She also led Fernandez v. CoreLogic Credco, another sanctions-list matching case that produced a $58.5 million gross settlement. In Hill-Green v. Experian, Berger Montague served as co-lead class counsel in litigation over fraud-alert reporting; the resolution combined injunctive relief with approximately $23 million in monetary relief.

A Hundred Million Records

After the 2013 Target payment-card breach, Drake was appointed liaison counsel for the consumer track. The class encompassed approximately 100 million people, and the settlement created a $10 million fund for consumer claims. Following an appellate remand and renewed district-court review, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the settlement, class certification, and fee award. Her role required coordination across a nationwide class before data-breach litigation had developed its present scale.

That scale now includes In re MOVEit Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, where the court appointed Drake as one of five Lead Counsel after the exploitation of a vulnerability in widely used file-transfer software. The consolidated proceeding remains active, not a completed recovery. Drake has stated her objective in the case directly: bring the litigation to a successful conclusion and change how companies secure sensitive information placed on internet-facing systems.

From Proof to Remedy

Drake’s other leadership assignments show how the remedy changes with the system. In the JUUL multidistrict litigation, she served on the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee and chaired the consumer class-action committee; the consumer class settlement accounted for $255 million within an overall multidistrict resolution of approximately $1.2 billion. In consolidated force-placed-insurance litigation against Citibank, she obtained a settlement valued at $110 million for nationwide borrower classes.

Two current matters remain in litigation. In In re Change Healthcare, Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, the court appointed Drake co-lead counsel for health care providers, including doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, after the 2024 cyberattack and shutdown disrupted access to insurance payments. In Christian v. Trans Union LLC, she serves as lead class counsel for consumers who allege that TransUnion reported them as deceased when they were alive, impairing their ability to obtain credit.

Drake is an Executive Shareholder at Berger Montague, where she founded and manages the firm’s second-largest office. She chairs its Credit Reporting and Background Checks Department and co-chairs its Consumer Protection and Technology, Privacy and Data Breach departments. She has served as lead or co-lead counsel in more than fifty class actions. Across those matters, the legal theory depends on understanding the machinery beneath the result: a matching protocol, a mailing workflow, an insurance-placement process, or the security architecture of a file-transfer product.

The Person Inside the Record

Her work beyond individual cases retains the same focus. Drake chairs the board of the Southern Center for Human Rights and serves on the board of Public Justice and the Partners’ Council of the National Consumer Law Center. She is a former board member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates and has taught consumer lawyers about credit reporting, class certification, evidence, and the use of data in litigation.

A capital case and a credit report place different stakes on a record, but both require a lawyer to ask who assembled it, what it says, and whether the person it describes can contest it. Drake’s privacy and consumer cases return to that practical demand. When an envelope, database, or networked product exposes or misstates personal information, the remedy must reach the person harmed and the system that produced the harm.