Class Action & Mass Torts

RSS Link

The Southern District of California recently declined to certify a class based on plaintiffs’ failure to offer class wide proof of deception and materiality.  In Gross et al. v. Vilore Foods Company, Inc., plaintiffs alleged that Kern fruit juice products were deceptively labeled as “100% Natural” or made with whole fruit when the drinks in…

A recent Fifth Circuit decision continues the trend of courts rejecting putative class and collective actions where absent class members are subject to arbitration agreements.

Exotic dancers sued A&D Interests, Inc. (doing business as the “Heartbreakers Gentlemen’s Club”) in a putative Fair Labor Standards Act collective action for allegedly misclassifying the club’s dancers as independent…

A consumer purchases a product and later finds out that the product was contaminated with a toxic substance.  Was the consumer injured?  Without knowing more, the answer is “no”—at least for the purposes of establishing standing in the Third Circuit.  In Koronthaly v. L’Oreal USA, Inc., 374 F. App’x 257, 259 (3d Cir. 2010), the…

A California federal district court recently granted in part the dismissal of certain federal and state privacy claims, including a California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) claim, in Hayden v. The Retail Equation, Inc., No. 8:20-cv-01203 (C.D. Cal.).  Plaintiffs in Hayden alleged that twelve retailers unlawfully shared customer data with a computer software firm, The Retail Equation…

A recent class action refiled in federal court against Shopify highlights a growing trend  of lawsuits against companies related to the theft of cryptocurrency, particularly as a result of internal company threats.  See Forsberg et al v. Shopify, Inc. et al, 1:22-cv-00436 (D. Del.).  Despite not itself being a repository for or facilitating the sale…

Courts across the country continue to grapple with thorny questions surrounding the legal implications of cyber-attacks.  Recently, a federal court in California considered whether a plaintiff could assert a claim against a company when a cyber-criminal acquired his personal information from the company and then used that information to steal his cryptocurrency.  The district court…

In a recent decision, the Seventh Circuit answered a key question in Rule 23 commonality analyses: whether at the certification stage plaintiffs need to establish the terms of an allegedly common policy, or only its mere existence.  Ross v. Gossett, — F.4th —-, 2022 WL 1421315 (7th Cir. May 5, 2022).

The putative class consisted…

Last week, a federal court in Illinois dismissed a putative class action complaint alleging violations of the Illinois Biometrics Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) for engaging in “impermissible group pleading.”  The ruling serves as a reminder that a complaint that fails to plead specific facts as to each defendant does not meet the Rule 8 pleading…