Category - "Class Certification"

Federal Court Reverses Course and Decertifies Settlement Class

After preliminarily approving a TCPA settlement arising out of allegedly unsolicited faxes, the Middle District of Florida recently reversed course and rejected the settlement in light of the Eleventh Circuit’s finding that the district court had erred in denying a new party’s request to intervene. See Tech. Training Assocs., Inc. v. Buccaneers Ltd. P’ship, No. 16-1622, 2019 WL 4751799 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 30, 2019).

The plaintiffs (Technology Training Associates, Inc. and Back to Basics Family Chiropractic) sued the defendant (Buccaneers Limited Partnership) after they received allegedly unsolicited faxes offering Tampa Bay Buccaneers tickets. The plaintiffs further alleged that the faxes did not comply with the TCPA because they did not include the required opt-out notice.

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District Court Denies Class Certification Due to Lack of Ascertainability

Recently, the Middle District of Florida denied a motion for class certification, finding that the plaintiff had not sufficiently shown that the putative classes were ascertainable. Sliwa v. Bright House Networks, LLC & Advanced Telesolutions, Inc., No. 16-0235, 2019 WL 4744938 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 27, 2019).

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Court Denies Class Certification Due to Individualized Issues Regarding Recipients’ Consent to Receipt of Faxes

In E&G, Inc. v. Mount Vernon Mills, Inc., No. 17-0218, 2019 WL 4032951 (D.S.C. Aug. 22, 2019), the District of South Carolina denied class certification because individualized issues—specifically, whether recipients had consented to receive the fax at issue—predominated.

Plaintiff E&G, Inc. (“E&G”), a hotel franchisee of Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (“WWC”), received a fax from WWC that included advertisements from certain approved WWC vendors, including defendant Mount Vernon Mills, Inc. (“Mount Vernon”). E&G’s franchise agreement with WWC allowed WWC to offer assistance with purchasing supplies and to provide lists of preferred suppliers. E&G provided WWC with its fax number and updated its contact information over the course of several years.

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The Eleventh Circuit Holds That Receipt of a Single Text Does Not Satisfy Article III

The Eleventh Circuit recently held that receiving a single unsolicited text message does not amount to the harm required to sustain a TCPA claim. In Salcedo v. Hanna, John Salcedo brought a TCPA claim against his former attorney after receiving one multimedia text message offering a ten percent discount on future legal services. Salcedo filed suit in district court as the representative of putative class members of former Hanna clients who received similar texts. The district court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of standing. In an unusual step, the Eleventh Circuit agreed to hear the case on interlocutory appeal, and reversed the district court’s decision. In so doing, it created a circuit split on Article III standing and a significant hurdle for certifying TCPA class actions in the Eleventh Circuit.

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TCPA Class Allegations Stricken Due to “Unique Defenses Peculiar to Plaintiff’s Case”

The Northern District of Illinois recently clarified that a “revocation class” that defines a putative class as those having made “a request to stop calling [their] number” does not satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement. This memorandum opinion again highlights the significance of individualized issues of consent in a TCPA class certification process. Continue reading “TCPA Class Allegations Stricken Due to “Unique Defenses Peculiar to Plaintiff’s Case””

Court Rejects Attempt to Treble $925 Million Statutory Damages Award

The District of Oregon recently denied a motion for treble damages following a jury verdict finding that defendant made over 1.8 million advertising calls to the named plaintiff and other members of a certified class. Wakefield v. ViSalus, Inc., No. 15-cv-1857, 2019 WL 2578082, at *1 (D. Or. June 24, 2019). The court found that enhanced damages simply were not appropriate under the circumstances of the case. Continue reading “Court Rejects Attempt to Treble $925 Million Statutory Damages Award”

Fourth Circuit Affirms $61M Classwide Do-Not-Call Verdict

TCPA Blog senior editor Michael Daly was quoted in a Law360 article regarding the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in Krakauer v. Dish Network, which affirmed the certification of Do-Not-Call claims and the award of $61 million in statutory damages.

Mike and others predicted that plaintiffs will try to invoke the Fourth Circuit’s decision in other kinds of TCPA cases. Mike explained that “[p]laintiffs will no doubt take out of context the Fourth Circuit’s statement that ‘TCPA claims’ are ‘conducive’ to class treatment.”  “But that would be painting with too broad a brush,” he explained, because “other species of TCPA claims . . . necessarily turn on inherently individualized questions of consent and revocation of consent, among other things.”

The Fourth Circuit’s decision also serves as an important reminder that plaintiffs may try to hold businesses liable for calls that their vendors make. Mike explained that “the Krakauer decision is—as if anyone still needed one—a wake-up call.” He cautioned that business must be “hypervigilant about what they and their vendors are doing. They should not simply rely on contractual provisions disclaiming agency and requiring compliance and indemnification.”

Read “4th Circuit Ruling Eases Class Certification Path in Telemarketing Rows.”

Federal Courts Continue to Split Over Whether They Have Personal Jurisdiction Over Claims Brought By Non-Forum Class Members Against Non-Forum Defendants

For years, the plaintiffs’ bar has crammed thousands of non-forum class members into a single action in order to more easily justify broader discovery requests, and to more quickly aggregate statutory damages. And many defendants and courts simply assumed that plaintiffs could do so. But that assumption was called into question by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, a mass tort case in which the Supreme Court held that federal courts do not have specific personal jurisdiction over the nonresidents’ claims merely because resident plaintiffs “allegedly sustained the same injuries as did the nonresidents.” Continue reading “Federal Courts Continue to Split Over Whether They Have Personal Jurisdiction Over Claims Brought By Non-Forum Class Members Against Non-Forum Defendants”

Class Certification Fails Due to Individualized Issues of Consent

The Northern District of California recently denied a plaintiff’s motion for class certification after finding there was no “common method of proof” to determine which members of the class consented to Defendant’s calls. Revitch v. Citibank, N.A., No C 17-06907 WHA, 2019 WL 1903247 at *4 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 28, 2019). This decision is yet another example of how individualized issues of consent can defeat a plaintiff’s predominance requirement under Rule 23(b)(3). Continue reading “Class Certification Fails Due to Individualized Issues of Consent”

Court Denies Class Certification in Favor of Fitness Club: Plaintiff Failed to Show Commonality in Her Claim Theory and Applicable Consumer Contracts

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently issued two opinions in one case—Powell v. YouFit Health Clubs, LLC—that highlight the hurdles that plaintiffs can face in demonstrating typicality, ascertainability, and predominance when TCPA claims purportedly arise from consumer contracts.

In Powell v. YouFit Health Clubs, LLC, No. 17-62328, 2019 WL 926131 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 14, 2019), Traci Powell alleged that YouFit Health Clubs had violated the TCPA by sending “dual purpose text messages.” Plaintiff claimed that she was a former member of YouFit and that, after she cancelled her membership and paid her outstanding balance, she received two text messages that stated, in relevant part, “YOUFIT BALANCE FORGIVENESS: Get 1 year for $99 . . . to clear your past due balance.” She claimed that the texts had falsely stated that consumers had balances due on their accounts and had been sent without their consent. Continue reading “Court Denies Class Certification in Favor of Fitness Club: Plaintiff Failed to Show Commonality in Her Claim Theory and Applicable Consumer Contracts”