Justia Class Action Opinion Summaries

The Supreme Court held that the additional hour of pay an employer must pay an employee if the employer unlawfully makes the employee work during all or part of a meal or rest period constitutes "wages" that must be reported on statutorily-required wage statements during employment and paid within statutory deadlines when an employee leaves the job.Plaintiff, who was suspended from his job as a guard after leaving his post to take a meal break. Plaintiff filed a putative class action on behalf of employees of Defendant seeking an additional hour of pay, so-called "premium pay," for each day on which Defendant failed to provide employees a legally-compliant meal break. The trial court determined that Defendant had violated the meal break laws for a certain period and that a failure to pay meal break premiums could support claims under the wage statement and timely payment statutes. The court of appeal reversed in part. The Supreme Court remanded the case, holding (1) the court of appeal erred in concluding that extra pay for missed breaks does not constitute "wages" to be reported on wage statements during employment; and (2) the seven percent default rate of prejudgment interest set by the state Constitution applies to amounts due for failure to provide meal and rest breaks. View "Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc." on Justia Law

Following a False Claims Act lawsuit against Stericycle, customers were leaving and the price of Stericycle’s common stock dropped. On behalf of the company’s investors, Florida pension funds filed a securities fraud class action against Stericycle, its executives, board members, and the underwriters of its public offering, alleging that the defendants had inflated the stock price by making materially misleading statements about Stericycle’s fraudulent billing practices. The parties agreed to settle for $45 million. Lead counsel moved for a fee award of 25 percent of the settlement, plus costs. Petri, a class member, objected to the fee award, arguing that the amount was unreasonably high given the low risk of the litigation and the early stage at which the case settled. Petri moved to lift the stay the court had entered while the settlement agreement was pending so that he could seek discovery regarding class counsel’s billing methods, the fee allocation among firms, and counsel’s political and financial relationship with a lead plaintiff, a public pension fund.The district court approved the settlement and the proposed attorney fee and denied Petri’s discovery motion. The Seventh Circuit vacated. The district court did not give sufficient weight to evidence of ex-ante fee agreements, all the work that class counsel inherited from earlier litigation against Stericycle, and the early stage at which the settlement was reached. The court upheld the denial of the objector’s request for discovery into possible pay-to-play arrangements. View "Petri v. Stericycle, Inc." on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the order of the district court entering summary judgment in favor of RentGrow, Inc. and dismissing Plaintiff's complaint alleging that RentGrow willfully violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. 1681-1681x, holding that summary judgment was properly granted.Plaintiff commenced a civil action in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, sued on her own behalf and as the representative of a putative class of similarly situated persons, alleging that Defendant was liable for both negligent and willful noncompliance with the FCRA. The district court entered summary judgment in Defendant's favor, denied class certification, and dismissed the action. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that Plaintiff did not meet her burden of adducing competent evidence sufficient to prove each and every element of her claim. View "McIntyre v. RentGrow, Inc." on Justia Law

In January 2019, Ali brought this civil rights action against Chicago and several police officers, alleging that the officers followed a city policy “of refusing to release on bond an arrestee taken into custody on an arrest warrant issued by an Illinois state court outside of Cook County.” Days before the deadline for completing fact discovery, Ali moved to certify a class. The district court granted the city’s motion to strike, noting that Ali had not added class allegations to his complaint. Ali sought leave to amend his complaint to include class allegations, arguing that he did not have evidentiary support for the existence of the city policy until a November 2019 deposition. The city replied that it had acknowledged the policy months earlier. The district court denied Ali's motion. Weeks later, Ali settled his case.On January 25, the district court dismissed the case without prejudice. Also on January 25, Miller moved to intervene under Rule 24, asserting that he was a member of Ali’s proposed class. With his motion to intervene pending, Miller filed a notice of appeal from the January 25 order. On March 24, with that appeal pending, the district court denied Miller’s motion to intervene as untimely. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. There was no operative class action complaint. Miller’s motion to intervene was untimely; he is not a party to the lawsuit and cannot pursue other challenges. View "Miller v. City of Chicago" on Justia Law

This putative class action against California and San Diego County officials challenged California Governor Gavin Newsom’s emergency orders and related public health directives restricting business operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Plaintiffs, owners of affected restaurants and gyms (Owners), primarily contended the orders were procedurally invalid because they were adopted without complying with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Furthermore, Owners contended that the business restrictions were substantively invalid because they effected a taking without compensation, violating the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Rejecting these claims, the superior court sustained demurrers to the third amended complaint without leave to amend and dismissed the action. While the Court of Appeal sympathized with the position some Owners find themselves in and the significant financial losses they alleged, the unambiguous terms of the Emergency Services Act and controlling United States Supreme Court regulatory takings caselaw required that the judgment be affirmed. View "640 Tenth, LP v. Newsom" on Justia Law

In the Automotive Parts Antitrust multi-district litigation, a subset of consumers and businesses (End-Payor Plaintiffs), alleged that automotive-part manufacturers fixed prices in violation of antitrust laws and that they paid elevated prices for defendants’ parts or purchased or leased vehicles containing those parts. After eight years of motions, negotiations, approval hearings, and objections, the district court granted final approval to settlements between End-Payor Plaintiffs and defendants. The settlement agreements, the class notices, and plans of allocation for each settlement agreement defined the classes of plaintiffs to include consumers and businesses that bought or leased certain qualifying vehicles or paid to replace certain qualifying vehicle parts during designated time periods. The class definitions did not include insurers, assignees, or subrogees.FRS, a third-party company that manages and files claims for clients, later submitted claims on behalf of insurers that purchased or leased eligible vehicles for company use (Fleet Vehicles) and claims that are based on its clients’ claimed “subrogation rights” to class members’ claims. The district court denied FRS’s motion to intervene as untimely. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. FRS offers no legitimate excuse for failing to intervene after End-Payor Plaintiffs repeatedly expressed their adverse position; the district court alerted FRS to a deficient filing. End-Payor Plaintiffs would have suffered delay-related prejudice had the district court allowed intervention. View "Automotive Parts Antitrust Litig." on Justia Law

The Court of Chancery granted Defendants' partial motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' amended complaint, holding that Plaintiffs did not satisfy the statutory definition of "creditor" as required to have standing to pursue their amended claims under the Delaware Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (DUFTA).Defendant Genworth Life Insurance Company (GLIC) wrote a line of long-term care (LTC) insurance policies. Plaintiffs, a putative class of GLIC LTC policyholders and GLIC insurance agents who sold LTC policies, alleged that fraudulent transfers jeopardized GLIC's ability to pay LTC claims to its policyholders and LTC commissions to its insurance agents. Plaintiffs later amended their complaint to add three new claims challenging the distribution of certain proceeds as intentional and constructive fraudulent transfers. The Court of Chancery granted Defendants' partial motion to dismiss, holding that Plaintiffs' new DUFTA claims failed because they were not "claims" under DUFTA. View "Burkhart v. Genworth Financial, Inc." on Justia Law

Inmates who were housed by three Illinois Department of Corrections centers between April-July 2014, alleged that the prison-wide shakedowns conducted violated their constitutional and statutory rights, 42 U.S.C. 1983. The shakedowns involved uniformed tactical teams called “Orange Crush” that operated according to a uniform plan, which involved a loud entry, strip searches, handcuffing, and other procedures involving allegedly humiliating physical contact. The inmates allege that the planning and execution of the shakedowns violated the Eighth Amendment because it was designed to inflict pain and humiliation.The Seventh Circuit affirmed class certification. The plaintiffs satisfied the “commonality” requirement because they alleged that the defendants acted pursuant to a common policy and implemented the same or similar procedures at each institution and that the challenge was to the constitutionality of that common plan as enacted. The claims require resolution of key common factual and legal questions, specifically: “whether Defendants developed and carried out a uniform policy and practice that had the effect of depriving the putative class members of their Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment; whether the shakedowns were executed in the manner Defendants contend or as Plaintiffs claim; whether Defendants engaged in a conspiracy to deprive the putative class members of their constitutional rights through the shakedowns; and whether the Defendants knew of, approved, facilitated and/or turned a blind eye to the alleged unconstitutional shakedowns.” Those questions do not require individualized consideration. View "Ross v. Gossett" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs Nicole Leshane, Steve Garner, Justin Prasad, Isaac Saldana, and Maurice West sued defendants Tracy VW, Inc. and RJ Gill Ventures, Inc. alleging several Labor Code violations. Plaintiffs brought suit on behalf of themselves as defendants’ former employees, on behalf of others similarly situated, and on behalf of the state pursuant to the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004. After defendants filed a petition to compel arbitration, plaintiffs filed a first amended complaint alleging violations of the Labor Code solely as representatives of the state under the Private Attorneys General Act. Defendants continued to seek arbitration of plaintiffs’ individual claims and dismissal of their class-wide claims pursuant to the arbitration agreements each plaintiff signed. The trial court denied defendants’ petition to compel arbitration finding plaintiffs’ claim under the Private Attorneys General Act was not subject to arbitration citing Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348 (2014). Defendants appealed the trial court’s order. Finding no reversible error in the trial court's judgment, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "Leshane v. Tracy VW, Inc." on Justia Law

The Supreme Court denied a petition requested by West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc. and West Virginia United Health System, Inc. (WVU Hospitals) to invoke the original jurisdiction of the Court to obtain an extraordinary writ of prohibition in relation to a class action that had been pending since 2013, holding that Petitioners failed to show they were entitled to the writ.In their petition for prohibitory relief WVU Hospitals argued that the circuit court violated the express mandate of the Supreme Court as set forth in State ex rel. West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc. v. Gaujot, 829 S.E.2d 54 (W. Va. 2019), by failing to conduct a sufficiently thorough analysis of the factors required for class certification and by failing to give careful consideration to certain ethical issues. The Supreme Court denied the requested writ, holding (1) there was no inadequacy in the circuit court's findings of commonality and ascertainability; and (2) the circuit court was under no obligation to revisit its predominance analysis or the class definition under the Supreme Court's prior mandate. View "State ex rel., West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc v. Honorable Phillip D. Gaujot" on Justia Law