Earlier this year, it became clear that the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules is considering possible amendments to Rule 23. As Tony Lathrop’s post summarizes, the “front burner” issues at the moment largely concern class action settlements, focusing in on possible limits to cy pres relief and greater clarity on what Rule 23(e)’s
Two couples, the Varsamises and the Giannopolouses, sued Iberia Air Lines for not properly compensating them after their international flights were delayed. Their counsel soon ran into plaintiff-related difficulties: the Giannopolouses were not typical of the class (and wound up accepting Iberia’s Rule 68 offer of judgment); the Varsamises’ claims were dismissed at the summary
Professor Suja Thomas (of Oddball Cases fame) has jumped into the debate over proportionality in discovery with a post over at Prawfsblawg. The debate, prompted by the upcoming amendments to FRCP 26, asks whether a party should be able to withhold discovery on the grounds that it is disproportionate to the needs (and the
It’s a tale as old as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA"): defendant Janssen Pharmaceuticals sent out a fax reporting on the reclassification of its drug Levaquin for insurance purposes. The plaintiff sued it for violating the TCPA, claiming the fax was an advertisement; Janssen responded that the content of the fax was informational.
In Thornton v. DaVita HealthCare Partners., Inc., No. 13-cv-00573-RBJ-KMT, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145458 (D. Colo. Oct. 8, 2013), the plaintiffs filed a class action alleging various causes of action in the wake of a recall of certain brands of dialysis equipment. The case grew rapidly, and eventually involved several consolidated complaints.
The defendants
Plaintiffs filed a class action complaint against defendant Tournament One Corp. in Nevada state court. Tournament One removed the case to federal court, and immediately filed a Motion to Compel Arbitration and a Motion to Dismiss, or, in the alternative, to stay the case pending the arbitration motion.
In the resulting opinion, Kidneigh v. Tournament
Amber Pieloor filed a class action against her bank, the Gate City Bank of North Dakota. She accused the bank of re-sequencing a number of her financial transactions. Re-sequencing occurs when a bank records transactions in an order other than that in which they were received. Accusing banks of re-sequencing has become common; and
In 2007, four customers of Allstate Insurance Company sued it, alleging that it used outdated scoring algorithms to calculate their premiums, in violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act. They were later joined by another 19 named plaintiffs. Three years later, in 2010, the judge in the case denied certification and dismissed twelve of
The facts underlying the allegations in Boeynaems v. L.A. Fitness Int’l, LLC, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115272 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 16, 2012) are hardly remarkable. The plaintiffs allege that they signed up for gym memberships at a chain gym with no problem, but encountered serious difficulties when they later tried to cancel, a fact