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Last Friday, the Supreme Court reversed the class-wide judgment in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (pdf), concluding that the lower courts had not properly applied the Court’s holding in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins and that the vast majority of the class members failed to satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement for Article III standing.  (Our firm, including the three of us, represented the petitioner in Spokeo, and we filed an amicus brief (pdf) in support of TransUnion.)

The Court’s holding has enormous practical significance for defendants facing class actions seeking statutory damages.  The Court reinforced Spokeo’s core holding that Congress’s creation…
Continue Reading Supreme Court adopts robust view of Article III standing limitations in TransUnion, reaffirming and fortifying Spokeo

Ever since the Supreme Court granted review in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, businesses facing the risk of TCPA class actions have been waiting to see whether the Court would accept or reject a sweepingly broad interpretation—adopted by three circuits and rejected by three others—of what constitutes an autodialer under the statute.   

Today, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed (pdf), holding that equipment must be capable of random or sequential number generation in order to qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system” under the TCPA.

The Court’s holding has enormous practical significance for defendants facing TCPA class actions.  The use of…
Continue Reading Supreme Court unanimously holds that Congress took a narrow approach to the types of autodialing devices covered under the TCPA

In a very big deal for TCPA class actions, the Supreme Court granted review today in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid. The petition (pdf) raises the most significant issue in litigation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA): what kind of equipment constitutes an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ADTS) triggering the TCPA’s restrictions on calls and texts? (The other question presented by the petition—the constitutionality and severability of the exception for government debts—was decided by the Court earlier this week.)

As we have reported, there is a deep circuit split over how to read the statutory language defining…
Continue Reading Supreme Court to decide what constitutes an autodialer under the TCPA

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, a First Amendment challenge to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The bottom line:  The TCPA as we know it lives on (at least for now).

The plaintiffs who challenged the statute contended that because the TCPA’s bar on unsolicited autodialed calls or texts contained an exception for communications aimed at collecting U.S. government debt, that differing treatment amounted to is an impermissible content-based restriction on speech.  The Court splintered on two issues: (1) whether this exception was a First Amendment violation, and (2) if so, what’s the remedy?  A group of six Justices concluded that the TCPA contravened the First Amendment, and a differently composed group of seven Justices agreed that the proper remedy was to sever the government-debt exception rather than invalidate the autodialing restriction across the board.…

Continue Reading Supreme Court holds that the TCPA violates the First Amendment but only severs the government-debt exception as a remedy

One of the most hotly-contested issues in litigation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is what equipment counts as an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) triggering the TCPA’s restrictions.  In 2018, the D.C. Circuit threw out the FCC’s interpretation of the statutory definition of an ATDS—which was so broad as to encompass smartphones—as arbitrary and capricious.  (See our report on the D.C. Circuit’s ACA International v. FCC decision.)  In the wake of that decision—while parties await the FCC’s new rule—courts around the country have been weighing in how best to interpret the statutory text.

The issue is now the subject of a deep circuit split.  In recent months, both the Seventh Circuit in Gadelhak v. AT&T Services, Inc. and the Eleventh Circuit in Glasser v. Hilton Grand Vacations Co. (pdf) have concluded that equipment that dials from a pre-selected list of phone numbers does not qualify as an ATDS.  (Disclosure: Mayer Brown represented AT&T in Gadelhak; Archis was on the briefs in the Seventh Circuit.) The Seventh and Eleventh Circuits thus rejected the Ninth Circuit’s more expansive interpretation of ATDS in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC.  (See our report on Marks.)  The Second Circuit, in contrast, recently followed the Marks interpretation in Duran v. La Boom Disco.

In light of this growing divide, lawyers on both sides of the “v.” are waiting for the Supreme Court to step in.…

Continue Reading Seventh and Eleventh Circuits Reject, But Second Circuit Follows, Ninth Circuit’s Expansive Autodialer Definition in Marks

The Supreme Court has resolved many important questions about personal jurisdiction.  But somewhat surprisingly, it has not decided a fundamental question that arises in class actions – to establish specific personal jurisdiction (meaning case-linked personal jurisdiction) over a defendant, must the plaintiff establish that the defendant has sufficient connections to the forum with respect to all plaintiffs’ claims, or only the named plaintiffs’ claims?  Not only has the Supreme Court not decided this question, but no court of appeals has yet decided it.  The D.C. Circuit will likely be the first, in a case now pending – Molock v. Whole …
Continue Reading What Must Plaintiffs Show To Establish Specific Personal Jurisdiction Over Corporations in Class Actions?

Class action defendants usually prefer to have their cases heard in federal court, where the protections of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 apply and where courts and juries are less likely to disfavor an out-of-state business. And as every class action defense lawyer knows, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”) puts a significant thumb on the scale in favor of having large class actions heard in federal court, allowing for removal of most class actions in which the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million and there is minimal diversity of citizenship between the defendants and the members of the putative class. But how should CAFA apply when one business sues a consumer and the consumer files as a counterclaim a class action against a different business? Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. v. Jackson, a case presenting that question. (One of us attended the oral argument.)
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Continue Reading Supreme Court hears oral argument in case involving removal of counterclaim class actions

Plaintiffs frequently seek to certify class actions where the proposed classes contain a significant number of uninjured persons.  The First Circuit recently reversed the certification of such a class in In re Asacol Antitrust Litigation, concluding that a class cannot be certified where the “individual inquiries” necessary to resolve whether each class member has suffered an injury-in-fact “overwhelm common issues.”  When such inquiries are needed to ensure that a defendant’s due process and jury trial rights are honored, a plaintiff cannot satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement.  The court also rejected the plaintiff’s proposal to outsource these individualized inquiries to claims administrators.

We discuss the opinion in detail after the jump, but here are key takeaways for busy readers:

  • The decision explains why a proposed damages class likely fails the predominance test—and therefore cannot be certified—if there are more than a negligible number of uninjured class members and there is no administratively feasible way to weed out those uninjured class members without individualized inquiries.
  • The use of affidavits by class members to establish injury (or any other element of their claim) does not suffice to avoid individualized inquiries so long as the defendant plans to contest those affidavits, because a class cannot be certified on the premise that a defendant will not be entitled to challenge a class member’s ability to prove the elements of his or her claim.
  • Policy justifications for consumer class actions cannot relax the requirements of Rule 23 or defendants’ due process and jury trial rights.

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Continue Reading First Circuit Reverses Class Certification Where Individualized Inquiries Would Be Required To Identify And Exclude Uninjured Class Members

Over the past few years, the Supreme Court has heard several cases involving class action procedure, including China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh; CalPERS v. ANZ Securities, Inc.; and Microsoft Corp. v. Baker. Today, the Supreme Court continued this trend, granting review to decide whether Rule 23(f)’s 14-day deadline to file a petition for permission to appeal an order granting or denying class certification is subject to equitable exceptions.  Nutraceutical Corp. v. Lambert, No. 17-1094.
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Continue Reading Supreme Court Will Review Whether Rule 23(f) Deadline To Appeal From Class Certification Orders Is Subject To Equitable Exceptions