Three petitioners sued their former employer and certain of its agents and associates (collectively, “Employer”) asserting minimum wage and overtime claims individually and on behalf of others similarly situated. The district court entered orders compelling individual arbitration of Petitioners’ claims and denying their motions for class certification. Each petitioner signed the same long-form arbitration agreement, which included a clause waiving the right to initiate or participate in class actions. Petitioners sought extraordinary writ relief, contending that Employer’s failure to countersign the long-form agreement made it unenforceable, that the class action waiver violated state and federal law, and, in the case of one petitioner, Employer waived its right to compel arbitration by litigating with him in state and federal court. The Supreme Court denied writ relief, holding that Petitioners’ arguments were unavailing and that the district court did not err in compelling individual arbitration of their claims. View "Tallman v. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court" on Justia Law

Google's AdWords program is an auction-based program through which advertisers would bid for Google to place their advertisements on websites. Pulaski and others filed a putative class action alleging that Google misled them as to the types of websites on which their advertisements could appear. On appeal, Pulaski challenged the district court's denial of class certification, holding that on the claim for restitution, common questions did not predominate over questions affecting individual class members. The court held that a court need not make individual determinations regarding entitlement to restitution. Instead, restitution is available on a class wide basis once the class representative makes the threshold showing of liability. Therefore, the court concluded that the district court erred in holding that such individual questions would predominate. In Yokoyama v. Midland National Life Insurance Co., the court held that damage calculations alone cannot defeat certification. The court concluded that Yokoyama remains the law of the court and the district court erred in not following the rule in Yokoyama. Finally, the court concluded that the proposed method for calculating restitution was not “arbitrary” under Comcast Corp. v. Behrend. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Pulaski & Middleman, LLC v. Google, Inc." on Justia Law

This appeal arose out of the Department of the Interior’s misadministration of Native American trust accounts and an ensuing complex, nationwide litigation and settlement. The class action representatives appealed the district court's denial of compensation for expenses incurred during the litigation and settlement process. The court affirmed the district court’s denial of additional compensation for expenses for the lead plaintiff because the district court expressly wrapped those costs into an incentive award given to her earlier. However, the district court erred in categorically rejecting as procedurally barred the class representatives’ claim for the recovery of third-party payments, and remanded for the district court to apply its accumulated expertise and discretion to the question of whether third-party compensation can and should be paid under the Settlement Agreement. View "Cobell v. Jewell" on Justia Law

Insured filed a complaint alleging that Insured had breached a title insurance policy. Insured also alleged that Insurer had acted in bad faith and requested an award of attorney’s fees and costs pursuant to Va. Code Ann. 38.2-209. Insured demanded a jury trial “on all counts so triable.” Insurer sought to have the trial judge, rather than the jury, consider the issues of bad faith and attorney’s fees. The jury was permitted to award attorney’s fees. The jury found in favor of Insured and awarded $442,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs. The trial court judge vacated the jury’s award of attorney’s fees and costs, ruling that section 38.2-209(A) requires a judge, not a jury, to determine whether an insurer committed a bad faith breach of an insurance contract warranting an award of attorney’s fees. Reconsidering the evidence de novo, the judge then concluded that the evidence was insufficient to prove that Insurer had acted in bad faith. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) a judge, not a jury, must determine whether an insurer has acted in bad faith under the policy; and (2) section 38.2.209(A) does not implicate the right to a jury trial under Va. Const. art. I, 11. View "REVI, LLC v. Chicago Title Ins. Co." on Justia Law

This case arose after the Republic of Argentina defaulted on sovereign debt in 2001 and numerous bondholders, including plaintiff, filed a class action suit. In this appeal, Argentina challenged the district court's grant of plaintiff's motion to modify the class definition by removing the continuous holder requirement and expanding the class to all holders of beneficial interests in the relevant bond series without limitations as to time held. In this case, the features of the bonds make the modified class insufficiently definite as a matter of law.  Although the class as originally defined by the district court may have presented difficult questions of calculating damages, it did not suffer from a lack of ascertainability. The court concluded that the district court erred in attempting to address those questions by introducing an ascertainability defect into the class definition. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for an evidentiary hearing on damages. View "Brecher v. Republic of Argentina" on Justia Law

The U.S. chocolate market is dominated by three companies: Hershey, Mars, and Nestlé USA (the Chocolate Manufacturers). A certified class of direct purchasers of chocolate products and a group of individual plaintiffs alleged that the Chocolate Manufacturers conspired to raise prices on chocolate candy products in the United States three times between 2002 and 2007. They offered evidence of a contemporaneous antitrust conspiracy in Canada. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment. The Third Circuit affirmed, finding that the Canadian conspiracy evidence was ambiguous and did not support an inference of a U.S. conspiracy because the people involved in and the circumstances surrounding the Canadian conspiracy are different from those involved in and surrounding the purported U.S. conspiracy; evidence that the U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers knew of the unlawful Canadian conspiracy was weak and, in any event, related only to Hershey. Other traditional conspiracy evidence was insufficient to create a reasonable inference of a U.S. price-fixing conspiracy. View "In re: Chocolate Confectionary Antitrust Litig." on Justia Law

Phillips owns an underground petroleum pipeline, built in 1930. A 1963 report stated that 100 barrels of leaded gasoline had leaked beneath West Alton, Missouri, and not been recovered. The leak was repaired. In 2002 a West Alton resident noticed a petroleum odor in his home. He contacted Phillips, which investigated. West Alton has no municipal water. Testing on the owner’s well disclosed benzene, a gasoline additive and carcinogen, at three times allowable limits. Phillips purchased the property, and two nearby homes and, with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), established a remediation plan. In 2006 Phillips demolished the homes, removed 4000 cubic yards of soil, and set up wells to monitor for chemicals of concern (COCs). Phillips volunteered to provide precautionary bottled water to 50 residents near the site. Sampling of other wells had not shown COCs above allowable limits. MDNR requested that Phillips test the wells of each family receiving bottled water before ending its water supply program. Phillips chose instead to continue distributing bottled water. Most of the recipients are within 0.25 miles of the contamination site. In 2011 nearby landowners sued, alleging nuisance, on the theory that possible pockets of contamination still exist. The Eighth Circuit reversed class certification, noting the absence of evidence showing class members were commonly affected by contamination, View "Smith v. ConocoPhillips Pipe Line Co." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed a malpractice suit against Milberg and others for failing to meet the discovery requirements in the Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company, Inc. (VALIC) class action. On appeal, Intervenor-plaintiff-appellant Lance Laber challenged the district court's denial of plaintiffs' motion for class certification. The court concluded that the district court properly applied the choice-of-law rules of Arizona, the forum state. However, the court vacated and remanded for further proceedings, concluding that the district court erred in holding that the law of each class member’s home state governed his or her individual claim, rather than the law of Arizona where the alleged malpractice occurred. View "Bobbitt v. Milberg LLP" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, holders of BP securities, filed suit against BP and two of its executives, alleging that BP made two distinct series of misrepresentations in violation of federal securities law: one series regarding its pre-Deepwater Horizon spill safety procedures, and one regarding the flow rate of the oil after the spill occurred. The district court only certified the post-spill class. Both sides appealed. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in certifying the Post-Spill class where the district court determined that plaintiffs had established a model of damages consistent with their liability case and capable of measurement across the class, as required by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend. Accordingly, the court affirmed as to that issue. The court also affirmed the district court's decision not to certify the Pre-Spill class where plaintiffs’ materialization-of-the-risk theory cannot support class certification. View "Ludlow v. BP" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, seeking to represent a class of service technicians, filed suit against his employer, Hobart, and its parent company, ITW, alleging that Hobart did not compensate its technicians for the time they spent commuting in Hobart’s service vehicles from their homes to their job sites and from those job sites back home, and that Hobart failed to provide its technicians with meal and rest breaks. The district court denied the class certification and granted partial summary judgment to defendants. The district court also determined that plaintiff did not comply with the notice requirements of California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), Cal. Lab. Code 2698 et seq. The court concluded that the district court erred in denying class certification because it evaluated the merits rather than focusing on whether the questions presented - meritorious or not - were common to the class; the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the proposed class failed to meet the requirements of Rule 23(b) because questions as to why service technicians missed their meal and rest breaks would predominate over questions common to the class; in regard to plaintiff's commute-time claim, the court concluded that there was a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Hobart requires technicians to use its vehicles for their commute; and the district court properly dismissed the PAGA claim because plaintiff's letter is insufficient to allow the Labor and Workforce Development Agency to intelligently assess the seriousness of the alleged violations. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. View "Alcantar v. Hobart Service" on Justia Law