The Eleventh Circuit last month issued a significant class action opinion in Cordoba v. DirectTV, LLC, vacating a class certified in a TCPA class action and remanding the case. The issue underlying the court’s decision was...more
Does a state, whose citizens are among the absent class members in a class action settlement, have Article III standing to challenge the supposed unfairness of the settlement? In Chapman v. Tristar Products, Inc., the Sixth...more
10/22/2019
/ Appeals ,
Article III ,
CAFA ,
Class Action ,
Class Members ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
FRCP 24 ,
Injury-in-Fact ,
Lack of Jurisdiction ,
Objection Procedures ,
Parens Patriae ,
Regulatory Authority ,
Settlement ,
Standing ,
State Regulators
Two recent studies by the FTC show that some methods for notifying potential class members of class action settlements are not as effective as courts and counsel might believe. In September, the FTC published a report on two...more
While a war rages on the issue of standing in data breach cases, the need to prove damages is presenting an even greater hurdle for plaintiffs, as we have noted previously. One clear illustration of this trend is Attias v....more
8/27/2019
/ Actual Damages ,
Appeals ,
Article III ,
Class Action ,
Class Certification ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data Breach ,
Dismissals ,
Economic Loss Doctrine ,
Jurisdiction ,
Remand ,
Standing
As we have noted before, whether a claimant under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) gave “prior express consent” to receiving communications from the defendant is frequently a critical issue (and often the only...more
Bucking a recent trend and departing from both the Second Circuit’s Katz decision and the Third Circuit’s Kamal decision, the Eleventh Circuit found that a plaintiff had standing to settle a FACTA claim on behalf of a class....more
Yesterday, the Supreme Court sent Frank v. Gaos back to the Ninth Circuit to address the issue of standing under Spokeo.
Frank involved allegations of privacy violations. Plaintiffs brought class action claims against...more
Courts are still going both ways on applying Bristol-Myers Squibb to class actions. Two recent decisions highlight this split.
The first—and we’ll always start with the good news—comes out of the District of Massachusetts...more
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court in China Agritech Inc. v. Resh conclusively established that equitable tolling of the statute of limitations for putative class members – known as American Pipe tolling – applies only to...more
The Ninth Circuit’s decision not to grant en banc rehearing in Sali v. Corona Regional Medical Center should all but guarantee that the issue of expert testimony at the class certification stage is heading to the Supreme...more
These are interesting times at the Supreme Court for class certification defendants—and we aren’t talking about the Kavanaugh confirmation process. No, late last week, in Home Depot USA Inc. v. George Jackson, the Supreme...more
10/3/2018
/ CAFA ,
Certiorari ,
Class Action ,
Co-Defendants ,
Counterclaims ,
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ,
General Removal Provisions ,
Home Depot USA Inc v Jackson ,
Remand ,
Removal ,
SCOTUS ,
Third-Party
The Eleventh Circuit has held that, absent express language to the contrary in the arbitration agreement itself, whether class arbitration is permitted under an arbitration agreement selecting American Arbitration Association...more
Consumer data breach class actions, for all of their popularity on dockets and especially in headlines, can make difficult cases for plaintiffs. Issues like standing and damages often keep these cases from getting off the...more
8/23/2018
/ Article III ,
Causation ,
Class Action ,
Class Certification ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Data Security ,
Hackers ,
Identity Theft ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Predominance Requirement ,
Standing
While he often kept us guessing about how he might vote in politically significant cases, retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy was far more predictable on class action issues over the course of his 30-year tenure on the Supreme...more
7/19/2018
/ Article III ,
CAFA ,
Class Action ,
Class Action Arbitration Waivers ,
Class Certification ,
Federal Arbitration Act ,
FRCP 23 ,
Mass Tort Litigation ,
Personal Jurisdiction ,
Presidential Nominations ,
SCOTUS
Spokeo v. Robins – which confirmed that a plaintiff’s allegation of a defendant’s statutory violation without accompanying concrete harm fails to satisfy Article III’s “case or controversy” requirement – has brought the issue...more
5/29/2018
/ Actual Injuries ,
Article III ,
Class Action ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Debit and Credit Card Transactions ,
FACTA ,
Federal Rule 12(b)(1) ,
Forum ,
FRCP 23 ,
Injury-in-Fact ,
Remand ,
Spokeo v Robins ,
Standing ,
Statutory Violations ,
Subject Matter Jurisdiction
We recently commented on one hotly contested legal issue being addressed by the courts in data breach class action litigation, that of plaintiffs’ standing. Another issue that has been the subject of recent court activity in...more
5/17/2018
/ Banking Sector ,
Class Action ,
Common Law Torts ,
Credit Cards ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Data Protection ,
Dismissals ,
Economic Loss Doctrine ,
Financial Institutions ,
Merchants ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Risk Management
We’ve already written about Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016), in which the Supreme Court reaffirmed that all federal plaintiffs, even those alleging a statutory violation, must have suffered a real, concrete...more
3/28/2018
/ Article III ,
Class Action ,
Class Certification ,
Data Breach ,
Debit and Credit Card Transactions ,
Dismissals ,
FACTA ,
FDCPA ,
Injury-in-Fact ,
Motion to Vacate ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Remand ,
Removal ,
Spokeo v Robins ,
Standing ,
Statutory Damages ,
Statutory Violations ,
Subject Matter Jurisdiction
From the standpoint of class action practice, 2017 was as important for what did not happen as for what did. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights of the 2017 class action scorecard, with a look forward to how the...more
1/26/2018
/ American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah ,
Appellate Review ,
Ascertainable Class ,
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co v Superior Court of California - San Francisco County ,
Class Action ,
Class Action Arbitration Waivers ,
Class Certification ,
Congressional Review Act ,
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
FACTA ,
FCC ,
Financial Institutions ,
FRCP 23 ,
Microsoft v Baker ,
New Amendments ,
Personal Jurisdiction ,
Retirement ,
Richard Posner ,
SCOTUS ,
Securities Act of 1933 ,
SLUSA ,
Split of Authority ,
Spokeo v Robins ,
Statutory Damages ,
Subject Matter Jurisdiction ,
TCPA ,
The Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2015 ,
Tolling ,
Trump Administration ,
Voluntary Dismissals
Boxing fan Victor Mallh, attempting to take a class action swing at Showtime Networks for failures in its livestream broadcast of the Mayweather/McGregor fight in August of this year, will have to pursue his claim in...more
The Alabama Supreme Court recently vacated a substantial $124 million attorneys’ fee award in connection with a class action settlement (Lawler v. Johnson et al., No. 1151347, — So. 3d –, 2017 WL 4707517 (Ala. Oct. 20,...more
11/10/2017
/ AL Supreme Court ,
Attorney's Fees ,
Class Action ,
Class Members ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Due Process ,
Filing Fees ,
Intervenors ,
Objection Procedures ,
Objections ,
Opt-Outs ,
Remand ,
Settlement
In the final post of this series addressing competing class litigation, we’ll analyze the sparingly used but sometimes viable strategy of seeking an injunction against a competing class action. Under limited circumstances, it...more
Part two of our series on competing class actions will address strategies intended to “corral” multiple cases: venue transfer under the federal forum non conveniens statute, and seeking multidistrict litigation (MDL)...more
Multiple actions involving the same subject matter and the same defendant are a common feature of the U.S. class action landscape. In this series of blog posts, we’ll examine the problem of competing class actions, which...more
In 2016, House Republicans sponsored legislation aimed at curbing “no injury” class actions, which was supported by testimony from DRI, among others. The legislation passed the House but died in the Senate. Earlier this month...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has sent the Target data breach consumer class action settlement back to the trial court for a second look at class certification, holding that the district judge did not...more