Class Actions Brief Blog

Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court held in Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, No. 17-988 (April 24, 2019) that an ambiguous agreement cannot authorize class arbitration. The 5-4 decision split along ideological lines, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the Court’s conservative majority. Per Roberts’ opinion, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) requires both parties to an arbitration agreement to give their full consent to authorize class arbitration, a “markedly different” process than traditional individualized arbitration. In its 2010 decision in Stolt-Nielsen v ...

In a December order, Judge Eagles awarded $20.4 million in attorneys’ fees to Class Counsel in Krakauer v. Dish Network. The motion for fees was unchallenged by Dish Network, and all but a handful of the 18,000 class members approved of the amount.

The facts of Krakauer are familiar to longtime readers of Class Actions Brief. Plaintiffs sued Dish Network under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) for allowing their agent to repeatedly call plaintiffs despite their listing on the Do Not Call Registry. As we previously reported, after a trial in January 2017, a jury ...