Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision that highlights a growing disagreement among federal appellate courts as to whether class action settlements may include a cash incentive award to...more
More than two years ago, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, 975 F.3d 1244 (11th Cir. 2020) that incentive payments for lead plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits are improper. After...more
Two years ago, in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, the Eleventh Circuit upended decades’ worth of precedent by categorically forbidding incentive payments to class representatives in class action settlements...more
For decades, Plaintiffs and defendants have fought bitterly over most aspects of class-action law. One issue, however, had managed to escape serious contention: the propriety of paying “incentive awards” (also known as...more
The plaintiff in Alvarez v. Sunshine Life & Health Advisors LLC - the first Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA) action to settle on a class basis - filed his motion for preliminary approval of the settlement. And the...more
Motions To Strike Class Allegations: Here To Stay or Going out of Style? By their nature, class actions, given the prospect of classwide liability and potentially millions (if not billions) in aggregated damages, are...more
In Part I of this post, we examined the problem with incentive awards to class representatives and the conflict of interest that it creates between class representatives and the class they seek to represent. Recently, the...more
Time and time again this scenario repeats itself and necessarily begs the question: Who is supposed to be protecting the interests of the absent class members in these settlements—class counsel who is taking more than 30% of...more
Last month, in a split decision, the Eleventh Circuit reversed a district court’s incentive award to the named plaintiff in a class action alleging willful violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In doing so, it...more
On September 17, 2020, in a first-of-its-kind opinion, the Eleventh Circuit reversed in part a district court’s approval of a class action settlement, holding that “incentive awards”—payments routinely provided to named...more
In Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 29682, 2020 WL 5553312 (11th Cir. Sept. 17, 2020), a panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that incentive awards to class representatives are...more
In Johnson v. NPAS Sols., LLC, No. 18-12344 (11th Cir. Sep. 17, 2020), the Eleventh Circuit (the “Court”) found a series of errors in an order entered by the Southern District of Florida approving the settlement of a class...more
In a split decision, the 11th Circuit rejected a $6,000 incentive award for the named plaintiff in a TCPA class action. According to the majority in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, U.S. Supreme Court precedent prohibits such...more
On September 17, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a bombshell decision: A court may not award an incentive fee to a class representative. This is surprising, if not shocking, as it is standard...more
On September 17, 2020, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Eleventh Circuit) issued an important decision regarding incentive payments in class-action settlements in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) cases. In...more
In a split decision, the Eleventh Circuit rejected a $6,000 incentive award for the named plaintiff in a TCPA class action. According to the majority in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, U.S. Supreme Court precedent prohibits...more
In a surprising opinion, the Eleventh Circuit politely pointed out that “The Emperor has no clothes.” A common practice in class actions is for class representatives to claim and settling defendants to pay incentive awards....more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Incentive awards for class representatives are impermissible, according to a ground-breaking decision last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Though not an employment case, the...more
It is not atypical for class actions to be brought seeking damages that can be characterized as nominal in nature. An oftentimes powerful incentive for potential class representatives to put their names on a putative class...more
While not authorized by Rule 23, incentive awards to class representatives are a common feature of class action settlements. Nevertheless, a divided Eleventh Circuit panel ruled last Thursday that such payments are strictly...more
Class representatives play a vital role in competition and other class actions. They participate in the litigation process as an individual plaintiff would — devoting their time and resources to the case, and undertaking...more