Justia Class Action Opinion Summaries

Phillip and Sara Alig, along with Daniel and Roxanne Shea, filed a class action lawsuit against Quicken Loans, Inc. (now Rocket Mortgage, LLC) and Title Source, Inc. (now Amrock, Inc.). They alleged that during the refinancing of their home mortgage loans, they paid for appraisals that were not independent because the defendants had provided appraisers with the homeowners' estimates of their homes' value. They claimed this made the appraisals worthless and asserted statutory, breach of contract, and conspiracy claims.The United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia certified a class of West Virginia citizens who refinanced mortgage loans with Quicken and received appraisals that included an estimate of the property's value. The court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, awarding over $10.6 million in damages. The court found that the plaintiffs had established a conspiracy between the defendants.The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the class certification and summary judgment on the statutory and conspiracy claims but vacated and remanded the breach of contract claim. The Supreme Court vacated the Fourth Circuit's judgment and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, which emphasized that every class member must have Article III standing to recover damages.On remand, the district court reinstated its original judgment, stating that TransUnion did not affect the class's standing. However, the Fourth Circuit concluded that the plaintiffs failed to establish that class members suffered concrete harm from the defendants' actions. The court reversed the district court's judgment certifying the class and awarding damages, affirming the judgment on the named plaintiffs' statutory and conspiracy claims, and vacating the judgment on the breach of contract claim, remanding it for further proceedings. View "Alig v. Rocket Mortgage, LLC" on Justia Law

This dispute centers around Lexis’s sale of personal data reports to debt collectors. Plaintiffs alleged that Lexis failed to provide the protections of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681, et seq., in connection with its reports. The district court subsequently certified a settlement class. In this appeal, a group of class members claim the right to opt out of the settlement class and pursue statutory damages individually seeking to undo that settlement. At issue is the the (b)(2) Class, which includes all individuals in the United States about whom the Accurint database contained information from November 2006 to April 2013 – roughly 200 million people. The court affirmed the district court's decision, finding no error in the release of the statutory damages claims as part of a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) settlement, and no abuse of discretion in the district court’s approval of the settlement agreement. View "Berry v. LexisNexis Risk and Info." on Justia Law