The First Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that the thirty-day time period for removal under CAFA is triggered when the plaintiffs’ complaint or plaintiffs’ subsequent other papers provide defendants with sufficient information to easily determine that the matter is removable, even if based on information provided by or previously available to defendants, and that “other paper” is defined broadly to include correspondence from the plaintiffs or plaintiffs’ counsel ... Keep Reading »
California District Court Certifies TCPA Class Against Defaulted Defendant
The District Court for the Southern District of California certified a consumer class asserting violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) by defendant Bennett Law, PLLC. Plaintiff alleged that she received numerous automated debt collection calls on her cell phone from Bennett without her consent. The law firm failed to respond to her complaint, and the court entered a default. The court then proceeded to consider plaintiff’s motion for class ... Keep Reading »
Ohio District Court Limits American Pipe Tolling Doctrine
The District Court for the Southern District of Ohio recently limited the American Pipe tolling doctrine in a fraud suit arising out of the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities (“RMBS”). Plaintiffs’ 2011 Ohio complaint alleged that defendants’ offering materials upon which they relied more than three years earlier violated the Federal Securities Act. Defendants moved to dismiss based on the three year statute of repose contained in 15 U.S.C. §77m. Plaintiffs ... Keep Reading »
Northern District of Illinois Declines To Restrict Defense Counsel’s Communications With Putative Class Members
The Northern District of Illinois refused to restrict a defense counsel’s communications with putative class members, reasoning that the communications were not misleading or coercive. The case arose when a “romantic getaway” motel reservations desk employee claimed that all phone calls made to or from the motel’s reservations desks were intercepted, recorded, and archived without consent of either party to the calls, and that some employees listened to the calls for ... Keep Reading »
Magistrate Permits Defendants to Depose 196 Absent Class Members
In a class action involving claims of uncompensated, pre-shift off-the-clock work, a California federal magistrate denied plaintiffs’ motion for a protective order to prevent defendants from taking 196 depositions of absent class members as a part of a post-certification “pilot study” designed to determine the variability in liability among the class members. The certified class consisted of approximately 25,000 member employees. To establish liability, plaintiffs ... Keep Reading »
Court Grants Motion to Strike Class Allegations
In granting a recent motion to strike class allegations, the Northern District of Illinois made two notable observations about such motions: first, they are not disfavored, but rather an appropriate device for determining whether a class action can proceed; and second, that in analyzing the putative class for conflicts, the court is not limited to the face of the complaint. In the case, plaintiff brought a putative class action alleging her employer withheld actual ... Keep Reading »
Pennsylvania District Court Denies Terminated Insurance Agents’ Bid for Certification
The Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied plaintiffs’ motion to certify certain issues under Rule 23(c)(4) and 23(b)(2), holding that the presence of numerous individualized questions, choice-of-law concerns, and other inefficiencies in the putative class litigation made certification inappropriate. Allstate had terminated over 6,200 agents, 90% of whom happened to be over the age of 40, offering four different severance options to the terminated agents. Three of the ... Keep Reading »
Correlation Is Not Causation: Class Certification Denied Because Experts’ Methodologies Fail To Show Predominate Antitrust Injury For Either Direct Or Indirect Purchasers Of Optical Disk Drives
A California federal district court denied certification of two nationwide classes, each asserting a price-fixing conspiracy for optical disk drives (“ODD”), because the plaintiffs’ experts failed to provide a viable methodology for establishing class-wide antitrust injury. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants colluded to fix prices for ODDs, thereby preventing ODD prices from declining as quickly or as far as they would have absent the defendants’ anticompetitive ... Keep Reading »
California District Court Certifies “Not Inherently Unascertainable” Consumer Class
In addition to the explicit Rule 23(a) requirements of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation, an implied prerequisite to certification is that the class must be sufficiently definite: that is, the party seeking certification must demonstrate that an identifiable and ascertainable class exists. A class is ascertainable if it is defined by objective criteria and is sufficiently definite so that it is administratively feasible to determine ... Keep Reading »
American Pipe Tolling Inapplicable In Texas Negligent Misstatement Case
The Southern District of Texas found that negligent misstatement claims filed more than two years after the last alleged misstatement were time-barred and that the applicable statute of limitations was not tolled under American Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U.S. 538 (1974). The Plaintiffs, private investment funds, alleged that the Defendants, BP oil affiliates, directors and officers, made misrepresentations regarding: (i) the extent of BP’s commitment to a ... Keep Reading »
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