The Third Circuit recently affirmed a district court’s ruling in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) case that rejected class certification because individualized questions about consent precluded predominance. Conner v. Fox Rehabilitation Servs., P.C., 2025 WL 289230 (3d Cir. Jan. 24, 2025).
In Conner, a plaintiff brought a
Continue Reading Third Circuit Affirms That Individual Inquiries Into Consent Preclude Class CertificationWhether a class representative has actually been injured can determine the suitability of class certification, as a class with an uninjured representative will not be certified. But as illustrated by the First Circuit in Nightingale v. National Grid USA Service Company, — F.4th —-, 2024 WL 3337766 (1st Cir. July 9, 2024), when class certification is denied based on an erroneous interpretation of a class representative’s injury, that denial will not stand.Continue Reading First Circuit Reverses Denial of Class Certification Based on Erroneous Injury Ruling
A district court judge in the Northern District of California recently denied class certification in a putative privacy class action against Google and its Real Time Bidding (“RTB”) advertising system. Plaintiffs moved to certify both damages and injunctive relief classes based on allegations that Google shared personal information through its RTB system. The court denied with prejudice certification under Rule 23(b)(3), finding that individual questions about class member’s past consent to—and subjective understanding of—Google’s disclosures would predominate. The district court also denied the proposed injunctive relief class on the grounds that the proposed class definition was “fail-safe” and that plaintiffs had not met their burden to prove that their data was representative of the proposed class, but the court did so with leave to amend and requested further briefing. Plaintiffs subsequently petitioned for leave to appeal the denial to the Ninth Circuit.Continue Reading Affirmative Defense of Consent Leads to 23(b)(3) Class Certification Denial in Google Ad Bidding Privacy Litigation
The Ninth Circuit recently held that a class could be certified with class members who lost less than a penny of interest. But it also held that where some class members may have lost nothing at all, the district court must take a hard look at whether the predominance requirement has been met. Continue Reading Losing Less than a Penny Suffices for Standing for Class Certification, the Ninth Circuit Rules