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Evan Tager is a member of the Supreme Court & Appellate practice in Mayer Brown's Washington, DC office. Identified by Chambers USA as one of America's leading appellate lawyers for the past eight years, and profiled by Legal Times as a leading appellate lawyer, Evan has been integrally involved in a range of issues of paramount importance to the business community, including punitive damages, class certification standards, admissibility of expert testimony, and enforceability of arbitration agreements.
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As we’ve noted in this space before, one of the most persistent efforts to undermine the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion—which held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) generally requires enforcing arbitration agreements that waive class or collective proceedings—has been spearheaded by the National Labor Relations Board. In 2012, the Board concluded in the D.R. Horton case (pdf) that Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the ability of employees to engage in “concerted activities” (for example, union organizing), supersedes the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the FAA in Concepcion and its progeny and requires that employees be allowed to bring class actions (either in court or in arbitration).

Until recently, the D.R. Horton rule had been rejected by every appellate court to consider it—the Second Circuit, Fifth Circuit, and Eighth Circuit as well as the California and Nevada Supreme Courts—not to mention numerous federal district courts. But last year, the Seventh Circuit and Ninth Circuit parted ways with this consensus, agreeing with the Board and concluding that (at least in some circumstances) agreements between employers and employees to arbitrate their disputes on an individual basis are unenforceable.

This circuit split all but guaranteed that the Supreme Court would need to step in, and sure enough, last Friday, the Court granted certiorari in three cases involving the validity of the D.R. Horton rule. (We drafted amicus briefs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in each case). One case, NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., arises out of a Board decision finding that an employer had engaged in an unfair labor practice by entering into arbitration agreements with its employees, and the other two, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis and Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris, are private-party disputes in which employees invoked D.R. Horton to challenge their arbitration agreements.Continue Reading Supreme Court Will Review NLRB’s Anti-Arbitration D.R. Horton Rule

Here’s a great formula for becoming a rich plaintiffs’-side class-action lawyer:

  1. Copy-and-paste some cookie-cutter complaints alleging technical statutory violations. 
  2. Send demand letters to a group of deep-pocketed targets and negotiate coupon settlements with them before even filing the complaints.
  3. Then seek a six- or seven-figure award of attorneys’ fees for doing no heavy lifting, bearing no risk of non-payment, and providing no meaningful social benefit. 

But a district judge in Massachusetts recently changed the equation by cutting a class counsel’s fee request by more than eighty percent in Brenner v. J.C. Penney Co. (pdf).

Brenner was one of a series
Continue Reading Why Did A Federal Court Slash Class Counsel’s Proposed Fee Award In A Zip-Code Class Action By More Than 80 Percent?

As readers of the blog by now know, I’m always on the lookout for examples of class-action settlements that pay off the lawyers while providing little or no benefit to the members of the putative class. The most recent example is Galloway v. Kansas City Landsmen, LLC (pdf), in which Judge Greg Kays of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri rejected a coupon-only settlement.

The claim in the case is that the defendants, a number of Budget rental car outlets, violated the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) by failing to truncate credit card numbers and expiration dates on electronically printed receipts. The parties entered into a “claims made” settlement under which class members who submitted claims would receive coupons for use in future car rentals. The coupons would have a 120-day expiration date, be subject to blackout periods, and could not be combined with other coupons, discounts, or promotions. Meanwhile, the defendant agreed to pay $175,000 in attorneys’ fees to class counsel.

Judge Kays concluded that “few class members will likely file claims because the benefit of doing so is not worth the effort.” That was so for two reasons.Continue Reading Galloway v. Kansas City Landsmen, LLC: Court Rejects Coupon Settlement After Finding That Few Class Members Would Be Likely To File A Claim

Past posts have noted that federal courts have become increasingly skeptical of class-action settlements that contain a cy pres component.  Another recent example is In re Groupon, Inc., Marketing & Sales Practices Litigation (S.D. Cal.).  The plaintiffs in this case alleged that Groupon violated various federal and state consumer-protection statutes by marketing vouchers with allegedly improper restrictions on usage.  In settling the case, Groupon agreed to create a settlement fund of $8.5 million, of which $2.125 million would be paid to class counsel as attorneys’ fees.  The remaining funds would be used to provide settlement vouchers (good for 130 days)
Continue Reading In re Groupon, Inc., Marketing & Sales Practices Litigation: Judicial Skepticism Of Cy Pres Dooms Another Settlement

On September 26, California Superior Court Judge Kenneth Freeman rejected a proposed class settlement of allegations that Ticketmaster had misled ticket buyers by implying that fully disclosed charges for an Order Processing Fee and delivery by U.P.S. represented its actual costs.

Before commenting on the grounds for rejecting the settlement, though, I can’t resist observing that this is still another illustration of a lawyer-driven class action that attacks a practice that causes no actual harm to consumers. While at first blush it might appear unseemly to charge delivery fees that exceed the amount actually charged by UPS, it is a
Continue Reading Schlesinger v. Ticketmaster: California Trial Court Rejects “Pure” Coupon Settlement As Well As “Clear Sailing” Agreement To Pay Class Counsel $15 Million In Attorneys’ Fees

There should be little wonder why many plaintiffs’ lawyers hate CAFA: By and large, federal district courts take their obligation under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e) to police class settlements seriously, which generally means lower fee awards for plaintiffs’ lawyers. The most recent example is Ko v. Natura Pet Products, Inc. (N.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2012).

Ko is a putative nationwide class action alleging that a pet-food maker misrepresented that the ingredients it uses are fit for human consumption. The parties eventually reached a settlement under which the defendant would alter its advertising and pay the class
Continue Reading Ko v. Natura Pet Prods., Inc.: District Court Approves Settlement, But Slashes Attorneys’ Fees And Incentive Award

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Eleventh Circuit has consistently enforced agreements to arbitrate with class waivers. Earlier this week, it did so again in a case involving Sprint’s arbitration agreement in its service contracts. See Pendergast v. Sprint Nextel Corp. (pdf), No. 09-10612 (11th Cir. Aug. 20, 2012).

Businesses should pay close attention to Pendergast for two reasons. First, the decision closes a door that—at least according to some plaintiffs—had been left wide open in the Eleventh Circuit. Specifically, the Eleventh Circuit issued the first post-Concepcion federal appellate decision in Cruz v. Cingular Wireless LLC (pdf), 648 F.3d 1205 (11th Cir. 2011) (pdf), which involved the same AT&T Mobility provision upheld in Concepcion. Plaintiffs thus argued that Cruz did not apply to arbitration clauses that lacked the pro-consumer incentives of AT&T’s arbitration provision. See Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. at 1753 & n.3. Because the Sprint provision at issue in Pendergast does not contain similar features, Pendergast makes clear that Concepcion and Cruz extend to a broad array of arbitration agreements with class waivers.

Second, Pendergast rejects the attack on arbitration agreements that is currently in vogue among the plaintiffs’ bar: that without the class action device, a plaintiff will not be able to “effectively vindicate” his or her statutory rights. At the eleventh hour—or, to be more precise, just a few weeks before the Eleventh Circuit issued its opinion— the plaintiff filed a motion (pdf) attempting to invoke In re American Express Merchants Litigation (pdf), 667 F.3d 204 (2d Cir. 2012) (“Amex III”). In Amex III, the Second Circuit refused to enforce the arbitration provision in the agreements between the plaintiff and American Express after concluding that the plaintiffs could not vindicate their federal antitrust claims on an individual basis in arbitration. (Please see our more detailed reports on the Amex III decision (pdf) and the Second Circuit’s denial of rehearing en banc (pdf).) By enforcing Sprint’s arbitration clause, the Eleventh Circuit’s decision tacitly rejects the plaintiff’s attempt to invoke this “vindication of statutory rights theory” in the context of Florida’s consumer-protection statute.Continue Reading Pendergast v. Sprint: Eleventh Circuit Holds That Federal Arbitration Act Preempts State-Law Attacks On Class-Action Waiver In Sprint’s Arbitration Agreement

Lest there was any uncertainty on the topic, in Gelder v. Coxcom Inc. (pdf), the Tenth Circuit has now made clear that when a party moves for reconsideration of an order granting or denying class certification, the time for filing a petition for permission to appeal under Rule 23(f) runs from the date of the order resolving the motion for reconsideration.  The court rejected the contention that the motion for reconsideration merely tolls the time for filing the petition for review such that the time it takes to file the motion for reconsideration is deducted from the 14 days that
Continue Reading Tenth Circuit: Motion for Reconsideration Restarts 14-Day Clock for Filing 23(f) Petition

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f) gives federal courts of appeals authority to permit interlocutory appeals from orders granting or denying motions to certify a class. The rule leaves it murky, however, whether an order partially decertifying a class is appealable under Rule 23(f). In a brief opinion by Judge Posner, the Seventh Circuit has now held that it is.

In Matz v. Household International Tax Reduction Investment Plan (pdf), the court ruled that “an order materially altering a previous order granting or denying class certification is within the scope of Rule 23(f) even if it doesn’t alter the
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit: Order Partially Decertifying a Class Is Appealable Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f)

We recently reported on a class settlement in which no members of the class submitted claims.  The plaintiffs in that case contended that the defendant violated the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) by failing to post a notice on its ATMs that consumers would be charged a fee for using the machines.

More recently, in another case involving the same kind of alleged violation, Ballard v. Branch Banking & Trust Co. (pdf), Judge Ellen Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia refused to certify a class, concluding that, under the circumstances, a class action failed Rule
Continue Reading Lawyer-Driven Class Action Challenging ATM Fee Notices Flunks Superiority Requirement