Topic: Damages
Does Due Process Limit Aggregate Statutory Damages in Class Actions?
Statutes defining minimum damages per violation, such as many consumer protection laws, often inspire class actions. Plaintiffs argue that certification of such classes is easier because they avoid issues of individualized damages. But in the aggregate, these damages can become immense. As a recent case from the Ninth Circuit shows, however, the Constitution places outer […]
Continuing to Troll the Ninth Circuit Class Certification Waters – Will the Supreme Court Join In?
Updated 8-16-22: StarKist and the other defendants filed their petition for certiorari in the Olean Wholesale Grocery case. A link to the Petition is here. In September 2021 and again in June of this year, we wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Olean Wholesale Grocery v. Bumble Bee Foods and the court’s opinion following […]
Fishy Results for Class Action Defendants in the Ninth Circuit
Last September, we wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Olean Wholesale Grocery v. Bumble Bee Foods and the court’s decision to rehear the case en banc. The en banc Ninth Circuit has now waded back into the class certification waters, with mixed results for defendants. While the en banc court tossed back the panel’s […]
How Many Uninjured Class Members is Too Many for Certification? The Waters Remain Murky.
The extent to which the presence of uninjured class members may defeat class certification remains unsettled. While, standing alone, the existence of some uninjured class members may not be not fatal (depending on the circuit), just how many is too many to satisfy the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3) is still in flux. The Ninth […]
When can class members recover for non-traditional harms?
At oral argument in TransUnion, LLC v. Ramirez, TransUnion’s counsel told the U.S. Supreme Court that a lack of harm is a reason “to break out the champagne, not to break out a lawsuit.” The Court has now decided TransUnion, and its decision may make it harder for class-action plaintiffs to sue for non-traditional harms. […]
Special Master to Dish Out Unclaimed Judgment Proceeds
There is no shortage of consumer class actions these days, but most of these cases are settled or dismissed. If trials are rare, trials of class actions are rarer, if only because of the stakes. In 2017, Dish Network tried its luck with a jury in the Middle District of North Carolina regarding claims […]
Follow Up – Class Counsel Granted $20.4 Million Attorneys’ Fee Award in Dish Network Telemarketing Case
In a December order, Judge Eagles awarded $20.4 million in attorneys’ fees to Class Counsel in Krakauer v. Dish Network. The motion for fees was unchallenged by Dish Network, and all but a handful of the 18,000 class members approved of the amount. The facts of Krakauer are familiar to longtime readers of Class Actions […]
Business Court Approves Disclosure-Only Settlement, But Postpones Consideration of Attorneys’ Fees Request
Those who follow class action law probably will be familiar with In re Trulia (2016), the seminal decision of the Delaware Court of Chancery that put the brakes on disclosure-only settlements. Before Trulia, these controversial settlements were ubiquitous in deal litigation, in which shareholders of a company file a class action lawsuit seeking to stop […]
Follow Up – Dish Network Denied New Trial and Slapped with Trebled Damages of $61 Million
Today we provide you with an update on a previous blog post addressing Dish Network’s plea for a new trial after a jury awarded damages of $20.5 Million in a telemarketing class action lawsuit. After a five-day trial in January, a jury awarded damages by assigning $400.00 to each of the 51,119 distinct phone calls […]
Seventh Circuit Weighs In on “White or No Underwear” Policy
Occasionally, we see something outside of the Carolinas that is quirky enough to merit a mention in this space. Such is the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Mulvania v. Sheriff of Rock Island County, No. 16-1711 (7th Cir. Mar. 9, 2017). According to Wikipedia, “In 2015 Rock Island (Illinois) was ranked the 32nd ‘Best Small City’ […]