Justia Class Action Opinion Summaries

For almost a decade, Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (“Chiquita”) funded a violent, paramilitary terrorist group operating in Colombia. After class certification in Cardona was denied in 2019, the Plaintiffs here filed this Complaint in federal district court in New Jersey, raising state and Colombian law claims. The case was eventually transferred by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (“JPML”) to the Southern District of Florida. That court dismissed the Colombian law claims as time-barred, despite the Plaintiffs’ contention that they should have a right to equitable tolling under the rule announced by the Supreme Court in American Pipe.   The Plaintiffs challenge that determination, and they also say that the district court abused its discretion in denying their request to amend the Complaint to (1) support their claim for minority tolling, and (2) add claims under the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). The Eleventh Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings. The court explained that although there is a square conflict between Colombian law and federal law in this diversity action, under Erie, Colombia’s law prevails over the rule announced in American Pipe. However, the district court abused its discretion in dismissing the Plaintiffs’ Complaint with prejudice without having allowed the Plaintiffs the opportunity to amend to support their minority tolling argument, although the district court correctly denied the Plaintiffs’ application to amend their Complaint to include Alien Tort Statute claims. View "Jane Doe 8 v. Chiquita Brands International, Inc." on Justia Law

The appeal was brought in the name of purported clients of the law firms of Gallo LLP and Wynne Law Firm (“Gallo/Wynne”). Gallo/Wynne originally sought to represent a putative class of Walgreen’s store managers in the San Francisco Superior Court in a wage and hour action (the Morales action). A different group of attorneys from the firms of Miller Shah LLP and Edgar Law Firm LLC (“Miller/Edgar”) filed a substantially similar wage and hour action on behalf of Walgreen’s store managers in the Eastern District of California (the Caves action). Gallo/Wynne sought to encourage putative class members in the Caves action to instead join a separate “mass action” to be filed by Gallo/Wynne as Gallo/Wynne clients.The district court issued an order granting Miller/Edgar’s ex parte application for Corrective Notice to the allegedly misleading Letter and invalidated all Gallo/Wynne procured opt-outs from the Caves action. The district court issued a second order granting Walgreen’s motion to modify the scope of the Corrective Notice to be sent to all Gallo/Wynne procured Caves opt-outs. Appellants are purported clients of Gallo/Wynne, and they appealed these two orders.The Ninth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction and denied Appellants’ request for mandamus relief. The panel held that the two orders were amenable to review after final judgment, and this placed them outside of the third collateral order requirement: effective unreviewability. The panel held that the dispositive third factor–that the district court order is clearly erroneous as a matter of law– was not met here. View "RAQUEL AGUILAR, ET AL V. WALGREEN CO." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought a class action complaint against Cellular Sales of New York, LLC and Cellular Sales of Knoxville, Inc. (“Cellular”) for unfair wage deductions, unpaid compensable work, untimely commissions, unjust enrichment, and failure to pay minimum wage and overtime under the FLSA and New York Labor Law. Essentially, Plaintiffs claim that Defendants misclassified them as independent contractors instead of employees as defined by the FLSA and [New York Labor Law], thus depriving them of employee benefits required by law.   Cellular appealed the district court’s order granting attorney’s fees to Plaintiffs. Cellular argued that (1) the district court abused its discretion in finding that Plaintiffs’ successful minimum wage and overtime claims were sufficiently intertwined with their unsuccessful unfair wage deduction, unpaid compensable work, and untimely commissions claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law; and (2) regardless of whether the claims were intertwined, that the district court abused its discretion in reducing the attorney’s fees award by only 40 percent given Plaintiffs’ relative lack of success. 
 The Second Circuit affirmed. The could be explained that Plaintiffs brought wage-and-hour statutory claims that clearly arise from a common nucleus of operative fact regarding their time working for Cellular. Thus, the district court’s finding that the discovery involved in litigating the unpaid overtime wage claims is inseparable from the discovery involved in the unfair wage deductions, unpaid compensable work, or untimely commissions claims is well supported.  Further, the court affirmed the attorney’s fee awards explaining that fee awards are reviewed under a deferential abuse of discretion standard. View "Holick v. Cellular Sales" on Justia Law

A group of public servants who had contacted Navient for help repaying their loans (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) filed a putative class action lawsuit, alleging that Navient had not “lived up to its obligation to help vulnerable borrowers get on the best possible repayment plan and qualify for PSLF.”   Navient moved to dismiss the amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim, which the district court granted in part, dismissing all claims except “the claim brought under New York’s General Business Law Section 349”. The district court certified a class for settlement purposes under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) and approved the settlement as “fair, reasonable, adequate,” and “in the best interest of the Settlement Class as a whole.”   Two objectors now appeal that judgment, arguing that the district court erred in certifying the class, approving the settlement, and approving service awards of $15,000 to the named Plaintiffs. The Second Circuit affirmed concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in making any of these determinations. The court explained that here, the amended complaint plausibly alleged that the named Plaintiffs were likely to suffer future harm because they continued to rely on Navient for information about repaying their student loans. At least six of the named Plaintiffs continue to have a relationship with Navient. That is enough to confer standing on the entire class. Further, the court explained individual class members [in fact] retain their right to bring individual lawsuits,” and the settlement does not prevent absent class members from pursuing monetary claims. View "Hyland v. Navient Corporation" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court held that class action tolling applies to Haw. Rev. Stat. 46-72 and that a class action complaint may therefore satisfy the statue's notice requirement and that the availability of class action tolling turns on whether the class action provided the defendant notice of the subject matter and potential size of the litigation at issue.Plaintiff Hakim Ouansafi filed a putative class action lawsuit against the City and County of Honolulu alleging that Honolulu's failure to inspect and maintain its storm and drainage system caused him and other Honolulu residents to be injured by the April 2018 flood. Ouansafi then settled on an individual basis with Honolulu. The district court denied class certification, after which individuals affected by the 2018 flood brought twelve separate actions against Honolulu. At issue was whether the' suits were timely. The Supreme Court held that class action tolling applied to the individual suits because the Ouansafi complaint satisfied tolled the statute of limitations applicable to the individual suits. View "Coles v. City & County of Honolulu" on Justia Law

Clemens, then an employee, provided ExecuPharm with sensitive information, including her address, social security number, bank, and financial account numbers, insurance, and tax information, passport, and information relating to her family. Clemens’s employment agreement provided that ExecuPharm would “take appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality and security” of this information. After Clemens left ExecuPharm, a hacking group (CLOP) accessed ExecuPharm’s servers, stealing sensitive information pertaining to current and former employees, including Clemens. CLOP posted the data on the Dark Web, making available for download 123,000 data files pertaining to ExecuPharm, including sensitive employee information. ExecuPharm notified current and former employees of the breach and encouraged precautionary measures. Clemens reviewed her financial records and credit reports for unauthorized activity; placed fraud alerts on her credit reports; transferred her bank account; enrolled in ExecuPharm’s complimentary one-year credit monitoring services; and purchased three-bureau additional credit monitoring services for herself and her family for $39.99 per month.Clemens's suit under the Class Action Fairness Act, 28 U.S.C. 1332(d), was dismissed for lack of Article III standing. The court concluded that Clemens’s risk of future harm was not imminent, but “speculative.” Any money Clemens spent to mitigate the speculative risk was insufficient to confer standing; even if ExecuPharm breached the employment agreement, it would not automatically give Clemens standing to assert her breach of contract claim. The Third Circuit vacated. Clemens’s injury was sufficiently imminent to constitute an injury-in-fact for purposes of standing. View "Clemens v. Execupharm Inc" on Justia Law

Principal Life Insurance Company (Principal) offers a product called the Principal Fixed Income Option (PFIO), a stable value contract, to employer-sponsored 401(k) plans. Plaintiff on behalf of himself and a class of plan participants who deposited money into the PFIO, sued Principal under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), claiming that it (1) breached its fiduciary duty of loyalty by setting a low-interest rate for participants and (2) engaged in a prohibited transaction by using the PFIO contract to make money for itself. The district court granted summary judgment to Principal after concluding that it was not a fiduciary. The Eighth Circuit reversed, holding that Principal was a fiduciary. On remand, the district court entered judgment in favor of Principal on both claims after a bench trial. Plaintiff challenges the court’s judgment.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court agreed with the district court that Principal and the participants share an interest because a guaranteed CCR that is too high threatens the long-term sustainability of the guarantees of the PFIO, which is detrimental to the interest of the participants. The question then becomes whether the court clearly erred by finding that Principal set the CCR in the participants’ interests. The court held that the district court did not clearly err by finding that the deducts were reasonable and set by Principal in the participants’ interest of paying a reasonable amount for the PFIO’s administration.  Finally, the court affirmed the district court’s judgment in favor of Principal on the prohibited transaction claim because it is exempted from liability for receiving reasonable compensation. View "Frederick Rozo v. Principal Life Insurance Co." on Justia Law

This is an appeal from a district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment that Defendant Biloxi H.M.A., L.L.C., doing business as Merit Health Biloxi (“Merit Health”), a hospital, has a duty to disclose that it charges a “facility fee,” also referred to as a “surcharge,” to all emergency room patients who receive care at its facility. The district court, making an Erie guess informed by the Mississippi Supreme Court’s references to, and partial application of, the Restatement (Second) of Torts Section 551, determined that Merit Health did not have a duty to disclose because the surcharge was not a “fact basic to the transaction”, and it, therefore, granted the motion to dismiss.   The Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded. The court explained that in applying relevant legal precepts, the court thinks that the Mississippi Supreme Court would hold that Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged facts that Merit Health had a duty to exercise reasonable care to disclose the surcharge. First, Plaintiff alleged that the surcharge was a material fact. Second, Plaintiff alleged that Merit Health was aware that patients like her were unaware of the surcharge, but nonetheless failed to disclose it. Third, Plaintiff alleged that she had a reasonable expectation of disclosure because Merit Health holds itself out to be a “caring community-based organization” and patients like her expected Merit Health to disclose the surcharge based on the confidence and trust that they placed in the hospital. View "Henley v. Biloxi H.M.A." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs here—proposed class representatives of former employees of various Burger King franchisees—plausibly alleged that Burger King and its franchisees engaged in “concerted action” in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The district court, though, dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint on the basis that Burger King and its franchisees constituted. A single economic enterprise and were not capable of the concerted action that a Section 1 violation requires.   The Eleventh Circuit reversed and remanded, concluding that the complaint plausibly alleged concerted action. The court explained that the No-Hire Agreement removes that ability and also prohibits the hiring of any Burger King employee for six months after they have left another Burger King restaurant. In this way, the No-Hire Agreement “deprive[s] the marketplace of independent centers of decisionmaking [about hiring], and therefore of actual or potential competition.” For this reason, the court wrote, that the Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that the No-Hire Agreement qualifies under Section 1 of the Sherman Act as “concerted activity,” and the Plaintiffs sufficiently alleged that aspect of a Sherman Act Section 1 violation. View "Jarvis Arrington, et al v. Burger King Worldwide, Inc., et al" on Justia Law

In 2015, the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of Guam taxpayers in their class action lawsuit against the territorial government. Guam had excessively withheld income taxes to support government spending. Some taxpayers got their refunds through an “expedited refund” process that devolved into arbitrariness and favoritism. The district court had certified a class of taxpayers who were entitled to but did not receive timely tax refunds.Duncan then filed a purported class action challenging the Virgin Islands' income tax collection practices. Duncan alleged that the Territory owed taxpayers at least $97,849,992.74 in refunds for the years 2007-2017, and that, for the years 2011-2017, the Territory failed to comply with the requirement in Virgin Islands Code title 33, section 1102(b), that the Territory set aside 10 percent of collected income taxes for paying refunds, leaving the required reserve underfunded by $150 million. The district court denied class certification, citing Duncan’s receipt of a refund check from the Territory during the pendency of her lawsuit; the check, while not the amount Duncan claims, called into question Duncan’s standing and made all of her claims atypical for the putative class. The Third Circuit vacated, rejecting the conclusion that the mid-litigation refund check deprived Duncan of standing and rendered all of her claims atypical. In evaluating whether Duncan was an adequate representative, the district court applied an incorrect legal standard. View "Duncan v. Governor of the Virgin Islands" on Justia Law