Theo Benjamin
Partner Chicago
tbenjamin@edelson.com (312) 572-7212
I received my J.D. from Northwestern Pritzker School and received my B.A. in History from the University of Chicago, with general and departmental honors. I’m member of the Public Client and Government Affairs teams and primarily handle complex consumer protection, privacy, and environmental litigation.
Theme Song
Purple Rain - Prince
Favorite Game
Trivial Pursuit
Cups of Coffee
2
How I Get Around
Train
Curriculum Vitae
THEO BENJAMIN is a Partner at Edelson PC where he represents government clients in complex consumer protection and environmental cases. He is a member of the firm’s Public Client team.
Theo currently represents more than a half dozen state Attorneys General in historic consumer protection cases against the nation’s largest social media companies for allegedly designing their platforms to trap kids into harmful use. In those cases, he has helped secure a number of groundbreaking decisions, including the first state supreme court decision directly addressing specific personal jurisdiction over a social media platform and more than ten different orders from five different state courts rejecting the platforms’ arguments that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act or the First Amendment bar the state claims.
Theo has achieved significant results for his state Attorney General clients. His work contributed to a $462 million multistate settlement against JUUL Labs. This included the largest litigated settlement for the District of Columbia ever under its Consumer Protection Procedures Act. He has litigated matters involving youth vaping, e-cigarettes, big-tech data breaches, misuses of consumer data, and environmental actions over water and land contamination and natural resources damages from toxic chemicals. These efforts have secured innovative injunctive relief and multi-million-dollar settlements for government clients around the country.
Theo also represented the State of Idaho and dozens of municipalities in litigation against manufacturers and distributors of opioids, which has helped pave the way for landmark national opioid settlements with Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen.
Theo received his J.D. from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where he served as Comment Editor for Northwestern’s Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology and was active in the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Civil Rights Litigation Clinic. He received his undergraduate degree in History and Germanic Studies from the University of Chicago, graduating with general and departmental honors.
- Litigating twelve actions on behalf of state Attorneys General against social media platforms for harming teen users through design features that cause addictive and problematic use.
- Representing a regulator in the first-ever case filed by a state enforcer against a social media platform over claims that its A.I. chatbot harms kids.
- Representing multiple Attorneys General in their investigations into contamination and exposure resulting from PFAS, PCBs, and Chlordane.
- Represented the District of Columbia against JUUL Labs as a lead litigating state resulting in a $462 million multistate settlement, helping secure $15.2 million for the District in a consumer protection case. District of Columbia v. JUUL Labs, Inc., 2019 CA 07795 B (D.C. Super. Ct.).
- Obtained a $9.5 million settlement for the District of Columbia in a consumer protection case concerning Google alleged tracking of users’ location data without their knowledge and consent and using “dark patterns” to undermine users’ choices. District of Columbia v. Google LLC, 2022-CA-000330-B (D.C. Super. Ct.).
- Representing a broad range of stakeholders in litigation and bankruptcy against opioid distributors and manufacturers that includes the State of Idaho, dozens of municipalities, municipal risk pools, labor unions, and health and welfare funds. See, e.g. Int’l Union of Operating Eng’rs, Local 150, et al. v. Purdue Pharma L.P., et al., No. 2019-CH-01548 (Cir. Ct. Cook Cty., Ill.); City of Harvey, et al. v. Purdue Pharma L.P., et al., No. 2018-CH-09020 (Cir. Ct. Cook Cty., Ill.); Village of Melrose Park, et al. v. Purdue Pharma L.P., et al., No. 2018-CH-06601 (Cir. Ct. Cook Cty., Ill.); Intergovernmental Risk Management Agency, et al. v. Purdue Pharma L.P., et al., No. 2018-CH-12828 (Cir. Ct. Cook Cty., Ill.).
- State of Illinois
- United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- Swedish
In law school, Theo founded Northwestern’s first chapter of the International Refugee Assistance Project and helped provide legal aid, representation, and policy research to refugees and asylum seekers undergoing the U.S. resettlement process. Theo also served as a Comment Editor for Northwestern’s Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology and worked closely on two senior research projects with Professor Sheila Bedi, the Director of the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern. During law school, Theo also worked extensively with the Bluhm legal clinic –– in particular, with the MacArthur Justice Center, a public interest firm focused on challenging civil rights injustices.
Prior to law school, Theo worked as the Director of Academic support at Creative Academics, a tutoring company specializing in providing academic support services to students with learning disabilities. In tandem with this, Theo also worked as a youth tutor at a Jewish foster care and adoption agency in Los Angeles.