In Labou v. Cellco Partnership, No. 2:13-cv-00844-MCE-EFB, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26974 (E.D. Cal. Mar. 3, 2014), the named plaintiff sued cell phone company Verizon. She alleged that Verizon had used an automatic dialer to call her cell phone in an attempt to get her former brother-in-law to pay his cell phone bill, a
Rule 68 offers of judgment have been controversial in the class action context. Defendants will often use them in an attempt to moot the class claims of the named plaintiff: offering full relief first, and then moving to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds should the plaintiff decline the offer.
But there is a second
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.
University of Idaho law professor Wendy Gerwick Couture has published an interesting working paper analyzing a data set of dismissal opinions from securities fraud class actions: Around the World of Securities Fraud in 80 Motions to Dismiss. The paper is a quick read, distilling her data into eight major observations.
Among her most interesting
Robert Lisk of Alabama was building a fence. So he bought some fence lumber from Lumber One. Three years later (he alleged) he discovered that his lumber was rotting prematurely. He filed a class action against Lumber One, asserting, among other claims, that it had violated Alabama’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act (the ADTPA).
Lumber One
Ellen Delgado sued collection agency Collecto, Inc., accusing it of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by sending her an improper debt collection letter. After she filed suit (but before she moved for class certification), Collecto made an offer of judgment for Ms. Delgado’s full damages, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs. It
In the several years since the Supreme Court decided Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, scholars and litigators have argued back and forth about the appropriate pleading standard for various kinds of lawsuits. One of the most vociferous parts of that debate is over whether class actions should be subject to
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
The Madoff Ponzi scheme had far-reaching impact. How far? At least as far as Ireland and Luxembourg, each of which produced a number of plaintiffs in Trezziova v. Kohn (2d Cir. Sep. 17, 2013). In Trezziova, investors in a number of funds (the Thema International Fund PLC [], the Herald LUX Fund