Class Action & Mass Torts

The Ninth Circuit recently upheld a California district court’s dismissal of a proposed class action against Shopify for lack of personal jurisdiction, cautioning that subjecting web-based platforms to jurisdiction in every forum in which they are accessible would lead to the “eventual demise of all restrictions” on personal jurisdiction.

In Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., 2022

            December 1 marks an important and long-awaited change to Federal Rule of Evidence 702.  The Rule, pertaining to the testimony of expert witnesses, has not received a substantive update since 2000, when it was amended in the wake of the Daubert decision.  Now, more than 20 years later—and after years of study—the Rule has

On November 3, the Second Circuit reversed a lower court decision denying a motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action against Klarna.  See Edmundson v. Klarna, Inc., 85 F.4th 695 (2d Cir. 2023).  The decision offers guidance (and support) for companies looking to enforce similar “click-wrap” agreements with mandatory arbitration provisions.

The Sixth Circuit vacated an order certifying five statewide classes alleging a common brake defect in Ford Motor Company’s F-150 pickup trucks, remanding the case to the district court “for more searching consideration” of whether commonality under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(2) was satisfied.

In Weidman v. Ford Motor Co., 2022 WL 1071289 (E.D.

On October 24, a Nevada federal court dismissed a class action complaint against operators of hotels on the Las Vegas Strip alleging that defendants’ use of similar room-pricing algorithms constituted a per se illegal price-fixing agreement under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.  The decision, Gibson v. MGM Resorts International, No. 2:23-cv-00140 (D. Nev. 2023),

The Second Circuit recently revived a putative class action asserting false advertising and breach-of-warranty claims over “Reef Friendly*” sunscreen, providing another cautionary tale of how claims involving potentially ambiguous marketing language can survive a motion to dismiss even when clarifying language appears elsewhere on the product package.

In Richardson v. Edgewell, plaintiff challenged the labeling

The Eleventh Circuit resurrected a putative class action by holding that consumers need not prove actual damages in order to recover statutory damages based on alleged willful violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”).  See Santos v. Healthcare Revenue Recovery Grp., LLC., –F4th–, 2023 WL 7289662 (11th Cir. Nov. 6, 2023) (per curium).

On October 25, 2023, the Eleventh Circuit overruled several objections to a $2.67 billion antitrust class action settlement agreement that was the product of years of negotiations between Blue Cross and classes of its past and present health plan subscribers.  Two objections, raised by Home Depot, focused on (i) the settlement’s release of antitrust claims

A bank partnership that has recently been the target of a series of “true lender” attacks has defeated a California regulator’s motion for a preliminary injunction.  The regulator sought the inunction as part of a lawsuit that seeks to hold the fintech firm Opportunity Financial LLC (“OppFi”) liable for violations of California’s usury laws.  The

A California Superior Court recently certified a putative class action of California residents “who have used mobile devices running the Android operating system to access the internet through cellular data plans provided by mobile carriers.” See Order Concerning: (1) The Parties’ Expert Exclusion Motions; and (2) Plaintiffs’ Class Certification Motion, Csupo, et al. v. Alphabet,