Hi CIPAWorld!
Riddle me this: the plaintiffs all live in California, the proposed class is California only, and the claims arise under California statutes. So why is the case now pending in New Jersey?
In Brown v. WebMD LLC, No. 26-cv-02920-AMO, 2026 WL 2678210 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 11, 2026), the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted WebMD’s motion to transfer venue and sent a website tracking class action to the District of New Jersey. The Court declined to rule on WebMD’s alternative motion to dismiss and terminated it without prejudice to refiling in the proper forum.
Plaintiffs Mary Brown, Melanie Lynne Rhine, and Denise Bowen are all California residents, two in the Northern District and one in the Central District. WebMD is a Delaware limited liability company headquartered in New Jersey. Plaintiffs allege that WebMD integrated third-party tools containing cookies into its website, that California users received a pop-up banner explaining they could decline non-essential third-party tracking through the “Manage Preferences” window, that they turned off the “Sale of Personal Data” setting and clicked “Confirm My Choices,” and that WebMD allowed Google, Adobe, and Teads to collect their data anyway. The complaint pleads six causes of action: invasion of privacy, intrusion upon seclusion, wiretapping under CIPA, Cal. Penal Code § 631, use of a pen register device in violation of CIPA § 638.51, fraud, deceit, and/or misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment.
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), a district court may transfer a civil action, for the convenience of parties and witnesses and in the interest of justice, to any district where it might have been brought. The movant bears the burden. The Court asks first whether the case could have been brought in the transferee district, then weighs convenience and fairness under the private interest factors collected in Saunders v. USAA Life Ins. Co., 71 F. Supp. 3d 1058, 1060 (N.D. Cal. 2014), along with public interest considerations such as the local interest in the controversy. No single factor is dispositive, and the Court took up only those the parties disputed. Step one was uncontested, since WebMD is headquartered in New Jersey and subject to general jurisdiction there.
Governing law and choice of forum favored California, but only modestly. Federal courts are deemed capable of applying the substantive law of other states, so that factor carries little weight, though the Court acknowledged that California district courts are more familiar with California law. Because Plaintiffs plead California claims and seek a California-only class, it weighs slightly against transfer. As for forum choice, deference is reduced, not eliminated, when the named plaintiff represents a class, and it shrinks further where the chosen venue is not the plaintiff’s residence and the conduct occurred in a different forum. All three conditions applied. Still, with a California-only putative class and two named plaintiffs in the Northern District, the Court granted some deference and found that this factor moderately weighs against transfer.
Contacts with the forum weighed heavily toward New Jersey. The conduct giving rise to the claims originated at WebMD’s headquarters, which the Court described as the factual center of the case and the locus of all relevant decision-making. Plaintiffs countered with the banner directed at California users, cookies placed on California devices, and third parties headquartered in the Northern District. The Court resolved the parties’ dispute over the banner in Plaintiffs’ favor as the non-movant and accepted that allegation as true, yet found that their presence in California when injured does not outweigh the decision-making in New Jersey, and that none of the alleged decisions or actions constituting the basis of the action occurred in California.
Sources of proof split into witnesses and documents, and both favored transfer. The relative convenience to witnesses is often the most important consideration, and non-party convenience counts for more than party convenience. Plaintiffs pointed to Google and Adobe as employers of anticipated non-party witnesses but never identified a witness, inferring location from where the employers are headquartered, which the Court found insufficient for companies national or international in size. That left party witnesses, and WebMD named employees involved in website creation and the senior leadership and decision makers overseeing those functions, all in New Jersey. On documents, electronic storage minimizes the factor, but costs can still be substantially lessened where most of the documentary evidence is stored, and WebMD’s corporate records are in New Jersey. Costs of litigation came out neutral, since neither party showed that costs would be greater in its preferred venue.
Local interest went to New Jersey as well. Both states have genuine interests, but this suit has only one defendant, WebMD, which is located in New Jersey, and the lawsuit centers on conduct and decision-making that occurred there rather than on the injuries experienced in California. The transferee venue’s interest in regulating WebMD’s business practices is therefore greater than the Northern District’s interest in this matter. On balance, WebMD met its burden.
The important takeaway here is that in a CIPA website tracking case, where the defendant made its decisions can matter more than where the plaintiffs sat when the cookies were placed. California residency, California statutes, and a California-only class did not keep this case home. The witness analysis is worth reading twice: naming the companies whose employees might testify is not the same as naming the witnesses. Venue is still decided factor by factor, case by case.
We will keep you posted, CIPAWorld!
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