Justia Class Action Opinion Summaries

The Illinois Attorney General filed suit against eight manufacturers of LCD panels for violations of the Illinois Antitrust Act, claiming that the defendants unlawfully inflated prices on LCD products sold to the state, its agencies, and residents. The complaint sought injunctive relief, civil penalties, and treble statutory damages for the state as a purchaser and, as parens patriae, for harmed residents. Defendants removed the case to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, 28 U.S.C. 1332(d), 1453. The district court granted a motion to remand. The Seventh Circuit denied appeal, rejecting defendants' characterization of the parens patriae case as a disguised class action or mass action. View "LG Display Co., Ltd. v. Madigan" on Justia Law

Students and former students of the University of Alabama, Auburn University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, filed three separate class-action lawsuits in the Jefferson Circuit Court challenging the legality of so-called "dining-dollars" programs implemented by the universities and pursuant to which all undergraduate students were required to pay a mandatory dining fee each semester, which was then credited back to the students in the form of "dining dollars" that could be spent only at on-campus dining outlets controlled exclusively by the food-service vendors for the universities - Aramark Educational Services, Inc., at UA; Compass Group, USA, Inc. (Chartwells) at Auburn; and Sodexo, Inc., at UAB. The trial court dismissed the three actions, and the students appealed. The Supreme Court consolidated the appeals for the purpose of writing one opinion and affirmed all three. The students sued the boards of trustees governing the universities and the food-service vendors, alleging that the dining-dollars programs violated: (1) state antitrust laws; (2) the Alabama Constitution inasmuch as it forbids the State from having an interest in a private enterprise; (3) the rule in 16-1-32(d) barring universities from charging excessive transaction fees to merchants that accept university-issued debit cards; and (4) the common-law prohibition on conversion. Because the boards of trustees are entitled to state immunity pursuant to section 14 of the Alabama Constitution, all claims against them were properly dismissed. The university administrators and foodservice vendors were entitled to immunity on the asserted antitrust claims as well, albeit state-action immunity as opposed to state immunity. Moreover, because the students lacked standing to pursue a cause of action for a violation of 16-1-32(d), and because the students did not and could not allege the necessary elements of a conversion claim, the trial court also properly dismissed the students' other claims.

Comcast‘s share of programming distribution services in the Philadelphia Designated Market Area allegedly grew from 23.9 percent in 1998 to 69.5 percent in 2007. Customers alleged violations of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1 & 2, claiming that Comcast eliminated competition, raised entry barriers, maintained increased prices, and deprived subscribers of lower prices that would result from effective competition. Following a 2008 Third Circuit decision, the district court reconsidered its class certification with respect to Rule 23(b)'s predominance requirement. After taking evidence the court held that plaintiffs demonstrated that: questions of law and fact common to class members predominate; the relevant geographic market could be the Philadelphia Designated Market Area; the class could establish antitrust impact on the theory that clustering through swaps and acquisitions deterred overbuilder competition; plaintiffs' expert provided common evidence to measure damages; and the class could establish antitrust impact through common evidence. The court narrowed class-wide impact to a theory that Comcast engaged in anticompetitive clustering that deterred entry of overbuilders. The Third Circuit affirmed. Plaintiffs established by a preponderance of evidence that they would be able to prove through common evidence class-wide antitrust impact (higher cost on non-basic cable programming), and a common methodology to quantify damages on a class-wide basis.

Petitioners, registered nurses ("RNs") employed in the region, filed a complaint alleging that various hospital owners and operators in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metropolitan area had conspired to depress the compensation of RNs in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. 1. A petition for leave to appeal was filed well outside the limitations period but filed within the fourteen days of the district court's denial of the motion to amend the class certification. At issue was whether such a denial constituted "an order granting or denying class-action certification" for purposes of Federal Rule of Civil Procedures 23(f). The court dismissed the petition and held that petitioners failed to timely petition with respect to an order reviewable pursuant to Rule 23(f) where an interlocutory appeal under Rule 23(f) could not properly be taken from an order denying amendment to a previous order granting class certification, at least when the motion to amend was filed fourteen days after the original order granting class certification.