On January 18, a court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin denied class certification in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case concluding that the factual issue of whether the proposed class members had suffered an...more
In conjunction with the G7 Summit in Japan, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) introduced additional economic sanctions on May 19, 2023, with the aim of further limiting the...more
Fail-Safe Class Definition. The District of Columbia Circuit reversed a district court’s denial of a class action on the grounds the plaintiffs had proposed an impermissible “fail safe” class—i.e., a class definition for...more
Data incident lawsuits, especially class actions, have the potential to create significant business disruption, loss of marketplace credibility, civil liability or regulatory exposure. Consequently, companies that experience...more
The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's recent watershed decision in Olean Wholesale Grocery Cooperative Inc. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC established several significant benchmarks for determining class...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently weighed in on the effect of uninjured class members on class certification—decertifying three classes in Olean Wholesale Grocery Coop. v. Bee Foods LLC. Olean concerned...more
Eleventh Circuit Rejects Administrative Feasibility Requirement: What Does the Future Hold for Ascertainability? As we discussed in our Spring 2017 issue of The Class Action Chronicle, courts have struggled to define the...more
The Need for Compensable Damage to Prove Standing - The United States Supreme Court has issued a decision in Spokeo v. Robbins. In this Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) case, the Supreme Court considered whether Congress...more
The U.S. Supreme Court granted review last week in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, which presents the question of whether Article III or Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure permits a damages class action where most...more
The Supreme Court granted cert in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC to consider “whether either Article III or Rule 23 permits a damages class action where the vast majority of the class suffered no actual injury, let alone an injury...more
On November 17, 2020, the Seventh Circuit held that allegations that a defendant violated Section 15(a) of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”), 740 ILCS § 14/1, et seq.—which requires an employer that...more
Robinson v. Southern Counties Oil Co, 53 Cal. App. 5th 476 (2020) - Summary: Res judicata bars a PAGA claim when the employer has already settled a separate PAGA claim covering the same claims and time period. An...more
Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020) - Summary: The ministerial exception, grounded in First Amendment’s religion clauses, barred teachers’ employment discrimination claims where teachers...more
Interpreting Bristol-Myers : Are Unnamed Members of Nationwide Class Actions ‘Parties’? If So, When? In 2017, the Supreme Court decided Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California (BMS), holding that a...more
On May 5, 2020, the Seventh Circuit held that allegations that a defendant violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) by collecting a biometric information without first obtaining informed consent...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On January 15, 2020, in Guzman v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., No. 17-CV-02606-HSG, 2020 WL 227567 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 15, 2020), Judge Haywood Gilliam of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of...more
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) is a federal statute that restricts how businesses employ telemarketing efforts, like soliciting text messages or prerecorded voice messages. The law often requires...more
A federal district court in Ohio concluded that a 401(k) plan participant could assert fiduciary breach and prohibited transaction claims only on behalf of the plan in which she participated, and not on behalf of other plans....more
As the use of biometric data continues to grow and become more prevalent across industries of all types and sizes, complying with data security and privacy laws has never been more critical or challenging. This is...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On June 5, 2019, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in NEI Contr. & Eng’g, Inc. v. Hanson Aggregates Pac. Sw., Inc., 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 16885 (9th Cir. June 5, 2019), upholding the district court’s...more
In Frank v. Gaos, the Supreme Court appeared poised to decide a divisive class action issue: whether settlement awards to third-party charities (known as cy pres awards) are valid. On March 20, however, an 8-1 majority...more
In Frank v. Gaos, plaintiff Paloma Goas brought a class action alleging that Google’s transmission of users’ search terms violated the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701, et seq. (“SCA”). The SCA creates a private...more
Some legal commentators and lawyers have pronounced the death of class actions in light of significant changes in the law in the last fifteen years, including the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act and the Supreme...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: At 852 pages, Seyfarth’s 15th Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report analyzes 1,453 rulings and is our most comprehensive Report ever. ...more
We have been talking about Frank v. Gaos, (No. 17-961), since the U.S. Supreme Court decided to tackle the extreme case of the use of the cy pres doctrine in the context of class action cases. The settlement is a cy pres-only...more