In the latest decision in a long-running saga in Drazen v. Pinto, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals tackled several issues regarding a proposed class settlement agreement. As we previously reported and discussed, Drazen involved three consolidated class actions against GoDaddy.com LLC, alleging that the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending unwanted text messages and calls through a prohibited automatic telephone dialing system ... Keep Reading »
Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal Class Action Articles
The latest class action developments and trends in Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal, including news, key cases, and strategies.
11th Circuit Stands Alone in Barring All Class Incentive Awards
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. The U.S. Supreme Court recently denied a petition for certiorari to review the Eleventh Circuit’s first-in-the-nation decision in Johnson. Three other circuits, the First, Second, and Ninth Circuits, have explicitly rejected the Eleventh Circuit’s ... Keep Reading »
The Lack of Actual Injury Defense: The Landscape Since TransUnion
The 2023 Carlton Fields Class Action Survey found that the second most successful class action defense is the lack of any actual injury suffered by some or all of the class. It also found that this defense made a big jump in effectiveness from the previous year’s survey. Those findings may be related to the fact that just over two years ago, in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Supreme Court confirmed that “Article III does not give federal courts the power to order ... Keep Reading »
Eleventh Circuit Vacates Class Settlement in GoDaddy TCPA Suit Based on Improper Class Definition
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently solidified an important rule about class standing: the definition of a class in a settlement agreement must be limited to class members with Article III standing. In Drazen v. Pinto, the Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s approval of a $35 million settlement agreement because the class definition included members who lacked Article III standing. Drazen involved a class action against GoDaddy.com ... Keep Reading »
Delivery in 30 Minutes or Less: Supreme Court Punts on Who Qualifies Under FAA Exemption for Interstate Commerce Workers
In Domino’s Pizza LLC v. Carmona, Domino’s petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify whether drivers making only in-state deliveries of goods, ordered by in-state customers from an in-state warehouse, engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, exempting them from arbitration under Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act. The Supreme Court on October 17, 2022, granted Domino’s petition for certiorari, vacated the Ninth Circuit’s ruling allowing the drivers to ... Keep Reading »
Fitting a Square Plaintiff Into a Circle Class? No Can Do Says Florida Federal Court
A recent decision issued by Chief Judge Timothy J. Corrigan of the Middle District of Florida highlights a straightforward yet consequential class action principle: a plaintiff cannot serve as a class representative for a class to which he or she does not belong. The specific case is Gartrell v. J.J. Marshall & Associates Inc. In Gartrell, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the Florida Consumer ... Keep Reading »
District Court Asks Sixth Circuit to Review Two-Step FLSA Collective Certification Test
The Sixth Circuit will soon tell us whether it will follow the Fifth Circuit’s lead in Swales v. KLLM Transport Services LLC and adopt a more exacting, one-stage certification approach for Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions, or instead officially adopt the two-stage certification process set out in Lusardi v. Xerox Corp., which is currently followed by most district courts. In Holder v. A&L Home Care & Training Center LLC, former aides claimed that ... Keep Reading »
Eleventh Circuit Affirms Class Certification and Settlement in “Factually Peculiar” In re Checking Account Overdraft Litigation Saga
Twelve years after it started, the saga of RBC Bank’s alleged improper assessment and collection of overdraft fees appears to have come to an end. In affirming the district court's certification of the class and approval of a settlement, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that “typicality” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 does not require identical claims or defenses and that only a substantial conflict of interest can destroy adequacy of a class ... Keep Reading »
Cy Pres Settlements in the Ninth Circuit – A View From the Street
Cy pres-only class action settlements are alive and well in the Ninth Circuit, where a unanimous panel of the court recently affirmed a settlement that provides no monetary relief whatsoever to the class, but awarded millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees to class counsel and distributed monetary relief to nine, third-party cy pres recipients. The case, In re Google Inc. Street View Electronic Communications Litigation, revolved around the collection of private data by ... Keep Reading »
Eleventh Circuit Judge Suggests Substantive Canon of Interpretation Favoring Arbitration Conflicts With Textualism
This blog has occasionally advised corporate counsel to review their company's arbitration agreements for scope and clarity. This is another such warning. Simply put, buttoned-up contracts containing arbitration provisions (including class action waivers) prevent class action exposure. But as Sixt Rent A Car just found out, less carefully drafted provisions result in class action litigation in court. And as Judge Newsom warned in a concurrence to his own opinion, ... Keep Reading »
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