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
Nearly three years after its decision in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions LLC, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals remains the only circuit in the nation to categorically bar class representatives from receiving incentive awards....more
When negotiating a class action settlement, lawyers on both sides may need to consider whether subgroups within the class need to be separately represented by different counsel. The First Circuit recently reached that...more
A California federal court refused to certify a putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class action in a lawsuit brought by a plaintiff who received one prerecorded call in error after a gym member’s phone number...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
In Hirsch v. USHealth Advisors, LLC, Judge Pittman, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, denied Aaron Hirsch’s (“Plaintiff”) Motion for Class Certification, which was based on allegations...more
The Tenth Circuit recently confirmed in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action that a plaintiff has to provide more than a list of potential plaintiffs’ names to certify a class....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 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
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
This week, an Eleventh Circuit panel, in a 2-1 decision, reversed the approval of an incentive payment to the named plaintiff, calling the payment an unauthorized bounty. The case involved a Telephone Consumer Protection Act...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Recent activity within the federal Courts of Appeals this spring may prompt Supreme Court resolution of a central and unsettled issue concerning personal jurisdiction in the class-action context causing...more
Recently, the Northern District of California joined other courts in more closely scrutinizing class certification motions in TCPA cases. In a case involving an automated phone call by a loan servicer regarding Plaintiff’s...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
The Middle District of Florida has denied a motion for class certification, finding the proposed class definition would have created a fail-safe class, the class members were not ascertainable, and the plaintiff’s claims were...more
Recently, the Middle District of Florida denied a motion for class certification, finding that the plaintiff had not sufficiently shown that the putative classes were ascertainable. Sliwa v. Bright House Networks, LLC &...more
Welcome back to the Class Action & MDL Roundup! Our spring edition covers notable class actions from the first quarter of 2019. There was a veritable traffic jam in the courts for the automotive industry. Manufacturers saw...more
Although courts across the country agree that “a plaintiff class should not be certified unless membership therein is ‘adequately defined and clearly ascertainable,’” the extent of what a plaintiff must provide to satisfy...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
Certification in a TCPA class action almost always turns on whether the issue of consent can be determined by common proof. But every once in a while, a class representative is found to be inadequate based on their close ties...more
Can a named class representative continue to represent a putative TCPA class action even after a Defendant pays the Plaintiff the highest amount he/she could possibly recover on their individual claim? That question was left...more
A few weeks ago, Judge Leigh Martin May in the Northern District of Georgia denied a Defendant’s Rule 12(b)(2) motion to dismiss brought on the basis that, under Bristol-Myers Squibb, the court lacked subject matter...more
In Mussat v. IQVIA, Inc., 2018 WL 5311903 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 26, 2018) Judge Virginia M. Kendall of the Northern District of Illinois held that Bristol-Myers Squibb applies to Rule 23 class actions, and consequently struck the...more
BCA Financial Services, Inc. filed a well-supported petition to the Eleventh Circuit today, seeking an interlocutory appeal from the district court’s order certifying the case a against it in Reyes v. BCA Fin. Servs., No....more