Class Actions Brief Blog

Since the Supreme Court’s opinion in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021), litigants and courts alike have struggled to determine whether certain intangible harms are “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent” such that a plaintiff has standing to sue. Indeed, this blog has previously analyzed cases addressing that question here and here.

The Fourth Circuit weighed in recently, holding that a subset of plaintiffs whose drivers’ license numbers were leaked and published online had standing to sue, but the plaintiffs whose numbers were leaked and ...

Our colleague Erik Zimmerman reported in an earlier post the memorable declaration from defense counsel in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021): when a legal violation results in no harm, those involved should “break out the champagne,” not “break out a lawsuit.”

In TransUnion, decided in 2021, the Supreme Court grappled with a question that has vexed federal courts in recent years: how much leeway should plaintiffs have to bring federal suits based on “intangible harms”? Article III courts have been redressing obvious harms to person and pocketbook since the ...

At oral argument in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, TransUnion’s counsel told the U.S. Supreme Court that a lack of harm is a reason “to break out the champagne, not to break out a lawsuit.” The Court has now decided TransUnion, and its decision may make it harder for class-action plaintiffs to sue for non-traditional harms. As a result, class-action defendants may be inclined to pop a cork or two. The full implications of the decision remain to be seen, however, so the best course for now may be to keep the refreshments on ice.

TransUnion was a class action brought under a federal statute ...

There is no shortage of consumer class actions these days, but most of these cases are settled or dismissed. If trials are rare, trials of class actions are rarer, if only because of the stakes.   

In 2017, Dish Network tried its luck with a jury in the Middle District of North Carolina regarding claims that it made over 50,000 telephone solicitations to 18,000 residential phone numbers on the Do-Not-Call list in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Dish lost and the Court trebled the jury award of $400 per call, resulting in $61,342,800 in total damages with $20.4 million in ...

Last year in this space, we reported on the continuing debate concerning the use of cy pres awards in class action settlements.  Since 2013, Chief Justice Roberts has provided cautionary comments about this practice.  See Marek v. Lane, 134 S. Ct. 8 (2013).  We also reported on the Ninth Circuit’s approval of a cy pres settlement in In Re Google Referrer Header Privacy Litigat., 869 F.3d 737 (9th Cir. 2017), which awarded plaintiffs’ counsel $3.5 million and six nonprofits/educational institutions another $5.3 million, all while awarding class members the proverbial goose egg.

For what appears to have been a frivolous lawsuit, In re: Subway Footlong Sandwich Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation generated an interesting opinion from the Seventh Circuit full of class-action issues. The case originated when an Australian teenager posted a photo of an 11-inch Subway sandwich, with a tape measure, on his Facebook page. Coming in the midst of Subway’s $5 Footlongs^TM campaign, the picture went viral, and class-action cases were soon pending.

After early discovery showed that most “footlongs” were, in fact, 12 inches long, plaintiffs’ counsel ...

We don’t often get appellate guidance after a federal trial judge remands a case to state court following removal because 28 U.S.C. Sect. 1447(d) generally makes such a ruling unreviewable. But the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”), 28 U.S.C. Sect. 1332(d), permits a court of appeals to accept an appeal of a remand from a class action. The Fourth Circuit exercised this right in Scott v. Cricket Communications, LLC, No. 16-2300 (4th Cir. July 28, 2017), in order to provide some guidance about the quantum and quality of proof required to prove the amount in controversy under ...

Standing to sue, a venerable piece of American jurisprudence for sure, continues to draw attention in recent class action cases, including in the Fourth Circuit. In its second decision this year evaluating last term’s Supreme Court decision, Spokeo v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016), a unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit found insufficient “an informational injury” the lead plaintiff advanced under the Fair Credit Reporting Act—the same statute under review in Spokeo.  Dreher v. Experian Information Solutions Inc., 856 F. 3d 337 (4th Cir. May 11, 2017). See also Beck v ...

Earlier this year, we hazarded a guess that the Supreme Court was split 4-4 regarding a Ninth Circuit decision holding that a named plaintiff could achieve appellate review of a decision denying class certification by voluntarily dismissing his individual claims. It turns out, based upon the Supreme Court’s decision in Microsoft Corp. v. Baker [], that the internal debate was not so much over whether the Ninth Circuit erred in allowing the appeal, but whether that error had both statutory and constitutional implications. The Supreme Court had accepted certiorari to review ...

Class actions don’t work if the class representative has a conflict with the class he or she purportedly represents. As the United States Supreme Court noted over 70 years ago, “a selection of representatives for purposes of litigation, whose substantial interests are not necessarily or even probably the same as those whom they are deemed to represent, does not afford that protection to absent parties which due process requires.” Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32, 45 (1940). A decision this week from Judge Higginson out of the Fifth Circuit provides an interesting commentary on ...

Experian recently petitioned the Fourth Circuit to immediately review a district court’s order certifying an 88,000-member, nationwide class of consumers who requested Experian credit reports that listed accounts with the now-defunct Advanta Bank. In this case, Dreher v. Experian Information Solutions Inc., No. 14-325 (4th Cir. July 3, 2014), Experian requested an interlocutory appeal under Rule 23(f), contending that, among other things, the district court’s order that certified a class with members that had suffered no injury and found Rule 23’s predominance ...

It is often expedient for a defendant to make an offer of judgment in order to avoid the expense of lengthy proceedings, particularly when the plaintiff’s damages claim is small. But what happens when the offer of judgment is made to a class representative? Does that mean that the individual no longer has standing? And does it make any difference if the offer is made before or after the class certification motion is filed? Judge Currie grappled with these issues last week in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, Chatham v. GC Services, LP, No. 3:14-cv-00526 (D.S.C. July 16, 2014)

Unlike many pretrial rulings, “[a] district court’s order denying or granting class status is inherently tentative.” Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 469 n. 11 (1978). Rule 23 expressly provides that “[a]n order that grants or denies class certification may be altered or amended before final judgment.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(c)(1)(C). Indeed, as the Fourth Circuit observed, in a case our firm handled, “an order certifying a class must be reversed if it becomes apparent, at any time during the pendency of the proceeding, that class treatment of the action is ...

The Second Circuit has observed that “[t]he [trial] judge [in a class action] should not regard himself as an umpire in typical adversary litigation. He sits also as a guardian for class members who have not received a notice or who lack the intellectual or financial resources to press objections.” Weinberger v. Kendrick, 698 F.2d 61, 69 n.10 (2d Cir. 1982). And this role is transparently on display when it comes to approving settlements, which is the court’s responsibility under Rule 23(e). Recent decisions in other circuits emphasize, particularly after Wal-Mart, that a ...