Class Action Procedure

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The Sixth Circuit recently vacated a class certification order in a decision that may make it easier for defendants to defeat putative class actions where a named plaintiff asserts standing based on the injuries of absent class members.  Under the “juridical link doctrine,” a named plaintiff may bring a class action against defendants who did not injure them so long as the absent members of the proposed class would have standing to sue those defendants.  In vacating a district court order that certified a class based on this doctrine, the Sixth Circuit joined the Second Circuit in rejecting the doctrine and holding that named plaintiffs in a putative class action must have standing to sue every defendant at the time of filing.…

Continue Reading Sixth Circuit Rejects Juridical Link Exception to Standing in Class Actions

The Third Circuit recently affirmed the denial of class certification to end-payor health plans that alleged that the defendant’s “pay-for-delay” settlement of patent infringement litigation inflated prices on a prescription drug.  In doing so, the court reaffirmed that named plaintiffs must present an administratively feasible mechanism to ascertain whether putative class members fall within the proposed class definition and thus took sides in a growing circuit split on that issue.  See In re Niaspan Antitrust Litig., — F.4th –, 2023 WL 3243532 (3d Cir. 2023).…

Continue Reading Third Circuit Defends Ascertainability Requirement in Affirming Denial of Class Certification

The Tenth Circuit recently affirmed an order denying class certification, in an unpublished decision holding that district courts may rely on out-of-circuit precedent in deciding whether a proposed class is ascertainable.…

Continue Reading Tenth Circuit Permits District Courts to Rely on Third and Seventh Circuit Ascertainability Precedent

We previously covered the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, 975 F.3d 1244 (11th Cir. 2020), in which the Eleventh Circuit relied on two Supreme Court decisions from the 1880s to prohibit courts from awarding incentive or service awards to class representatives in class settlements.  Id. at 1255 (citing Trustees v. Greenough, 105 U.S. 527 (1881), and Cent. R.R. & Banking Co. v. Pettus, 113 U.S. 116 (1885).  Although the Eleventh Circuit was the first federal appellate court to bar these awards in all circumstances, a recent Second Circuit decision agreed that these awards are “likely impermissible” under Supreme Court precedent, while observing that it would take the entire Second Circuit to overturn prior precedent upholding incentive awards.  See Fikes Wholesale, Inc. v. HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 62 F.4th 704, 721 (2nd Cir. 2023).  The Department of Justice has likewise implied that it agrees with the Eleventh Circuit’s position, relying on the Johnson decision in an effort to block incentive awards from a class settlement in a District of Columbia court. …

Continue Reading Supreme Court Denies Cert on Incentive Awards

The Eleventh Circuit recently addressed two aspects of Article III standing relevant to class action settlements: the standing of a class member to object, and the standing of class representatives to seek injunctive relief—and thus whether such injunctive relief should be given any weight as part of the approval process.…

Continue Reading Eleventh Circuit Analyzes Article III Standing in Class Action Settlement Context

            In Attias v. CareFirst, Inc., 15-cv-00882-CRC (D.D.C. Mar. 28, 2023), the court’s application of TransUnion v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190 (2021), reinforced that inclusion of uninjured class members in the class definition can defeat certification.  In CareFirst, Plaintiffs alleged that the data breach that CareFirst, Inc. (“CareFirst”), a health insurance company, suffered in 2014 exposed the plaintiffs to increased risk of fraud and identity theft.  Plaintiffs claimed they had to spend time and money on services such as credit and identity theft monitoring programs.  They sought to represent classes that included all CareFirst customers in certain states whose personal information was impacted by the breach, regardless of whether those customers incurred additional expenses as a result of the breach. …

Continue Reading D.D.C.’s Application of TransUnion Echoes the Importance of Actual Injury to Class Certification

A Minnesota federal court recently certified several classes of plaintiffs asserting antitrust claims against America’s largest pork producers and integrators.  In re Pork Antitrust Litig., C.A. No. 18-1776 (D. Minn. Mar. 29, 2023).

Each class of plaintiff asserted a per se theory of harm that defendants conspired to limit the supply of pork and…

In products and class action cases involving exposure to purportedly hazardous materials, plaintiffs often have trouble demonstrating concrete physical injuries, and in particular concrete physical injuries that would be common across a class.  To avoid dismissal and bolster class certification, those plaintiffs sometimes bring so-called “medical monitoring” claims, which seek recovery for the present-day costs…

            The Ninth Circuit continues its efforts to give teeth to the predominance requirement of Rule 23 as a potent tool for defendants to defeat class certification. 

            Earlier this year, in Bowerman v. Field Asset Services, Inc., 39 F.4th 652 (9th Cir. 2022), amended, — F.4th —-, 2023 WL 2001967 (9th Cir. Feb. 14, 2023), the Ninth Circuit determined that where individualized inquiries were necessary to determine the existence of damages—as opposed to the question of calculating damages—class certification was inappropriate because the class would fail to meet the predominance requirement of Rule 23. …

Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Sharpens Predominance Requirement:  Looking Behind Plaintiffs’ Fiction in Dismantling Class Certification

The Eleventh Circuit is poised to reconsider recent standing decisions favorable for defendants seeking to invoke Article III’s standing requirements to defeat class certification.

At issue is the Eleventh Circuit’s July 2022 decision in Drazen v. Pinto, holding that (i) all class members must have Article III standing in order to receive individual damages (whether through a settlement or otherwise), and (ii) the standing determination is decided under Eleventh Circuit law, even where certain class members do not reside within the Eleventh Circuit’s geographic boundaries and may have standing under other circuit precedent.  41 F.4th 1354, 1360–61 (11th Cir. 2022). The dispute in Drazen arose in the context of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), and addressed both unwanted phone calls and text messages.  While a settlement in Drazen was pending, the Eleventh Circuit held in Salcedo v. Hanna, 936 F.3d 1162, 1168 (11th Cir. 2019), that, contrary to precedent in other circuits, a single unwanted text message was not sufficient to give rise to Article III standing under the TCPA.  Because the panel was bound by Salcedo, and because the proposed class definition in the Drazen settlement included individuals whose sole harm was an unwanted text message, those individuals did not have standing.  The panel therefore vacated the district court’s approval of the settlement.…

Continue Reading Eleventh Circuit to Reconsider Standing Decisions