Justia Civil Procedure Opinion Summaries

Wolff received a settlement from the other driver, following a car accident. Aetna sought to collect some of the settlement funds to recoup the disability benefits it had paid to Wolff under her employer's disability plan. In a putative class action, Wolff alleged that Aetna had no right to recoupment and that Aetna’s disability plans utilized standard form language without meaningful variation both within and between employers. Wolff sought to certify a nationwide class composed of all employees who had enrolled in an Aetna standard form disability plan, who were allegedly coerced into repaying a portion of their disability payments from injury recoveries. Aetna argued that the language varied from plan to plan, so Wolff could not demonstrate the cohesiveness required for class certification. Federal Rule 23(b)(3) requires that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.”The district court certified the class. Aetna did not challenge the order within Rule 23(f)’s 14-day period. Three weeks later, Wolff filed a proposed class notice. Aetna filed objections, including proposed minor modifications to the class definition. After the court revised the definition, Aetna filed a 23(f) petition, which the Third Circuit denied. A modified class certification order triggers a new 23(f) petition period only when the modified order materially alters the original order granting (or denying) class certification. The revision in this case did not effect such a material change. View "Wolff v. Aetna Life Insurance Co" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Gene Moran, who was a patient at Huntington Beach Hospital (the Hospital) three times in 2013, sued defendants Prime Healthcare Management, Inc., Prime Healthcare Huntington Beach, LLC, Prime Healthcare Services, Inc., and Prime Healthcare Foundation, Inc. (collectively defendants) under various theories in 2013. In a prior opinion, the Court of Appeal found that while most of Moran’s claims lacked merit, he had sufficiently alleged facts supporting standing to claim the amount that self-pay patients were charged was unconscionable, and reversed the trial court’s dismissal of the case. Moran’s sixth amended complaint included both the allegations regarding unconscionability and a new theory of the case: defendants had violated the Unfair Competition Law (UCL), and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) by failing to disclose Evaluation and Management (EMS) fees charged in the emergency room through signage or other methods. The complaint sought relief under both the old and new theories for violations of the UCL, CLRA, and for declaratory relief. Defendants moved to strike the allegations regarding EMS fees, arguing their disclosure obligations were defined by statute. The trial court agreed and struck the allegations from the sixth amended complaint. Finding no reversible error in that decision, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "Moran v. Prime Healthcare Management, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought this class action against the Plan’s administrator, AT&T Services, Inc., and the committee responsible for some of the Plan’s investment-related duties, the AT&T Benefit Plan Investment Committee (collectively, “AT&T”). Plaintiffs alleged that AT&T failed to investigate and evaluate all the compensation that the Plan’s recordkeeper, Fidelity Workplace Services, received from mutual funds through BrokerageLink, Fidelity’s brokerage account platform, and from Financial Engines Advisors, L.L.C. Plaintiffs alleged that (1) AT&T’s failure to consider this compensation rendered its contract with Fidelity a “prohibited transaction” under ERISA Section 406, (2) AT&T breached its fiduciary duty of prudence by failing to consider this compensation, and (3) AT&T breached its duty of candor by failing to disclose this compensation to the Department of Labor.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Defendants. The panel reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment on the prohibited transaction claim. Relying on the statutory text, regulatory text, and the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration’s explanation for a regulatory amendment, the panel held that the broad scope of Section 406 encompasses arm’s-length transactions. The panel held that the broad scope of § 406 encompasses arm’s-length transactions. Disagreeing with other circuits, the panel concluded that AT&T, by amending its contract with Fidelity to incorporate the services of BrokerageLink and Financial Engines, caused the Plan to engage in a prohibited transaction. The panel remanded for the district court to consider whether AT&T met the requirements for an exemption from the prohibited transaction bar. View "ROBERT BUGIELSKI, ET AL V. AT&T SERVICES, INC., ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs’ lawyers filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of copyright holders of musical compositions and ended up recovering a little over $50,000 for the class members. The lawyers then asked the court to award them $6 million in legal fees. And the district court authorized $1.7 million in legal fees—more than thirty times the amount that the class received.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees to Plaintiffs’ counsel in a copyright action and remanded. The panel held that the touchstone for determining the reasonableness of attorney’s fees in a class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 is the benefit to the class. Here, the benefit was minimal. The panel held that the district court erred in failing to calculate the settlement’s actual benefit to the class members who submitted settlement claims, as opposed to a hypothetical $20 million cap agreed on by the parties. The panel held that district courts awarding attorneys’ fees in class actions under the Copyright Act must still generally consider the proportion between the award and the benefit to the class to ensure that the award is reasonable. The panel recognized that a fee award may exceed the monetary benefit provided to the class in certain copyright cases, such as when a copyright infringement litigation leads to substantial nonmonetary relief or provides a meaningful benefit to society, but this was not such a case. The panel instructed that, on remand, the district court should rigorously evaluate the actual benefit provided to the class and award reasonable attorneys’ fees considering that benefit. View "DAVID LOWERY, ET AL V. RHAPSODY INTERNATIONAL, INC." on Justia Law

Nicole Woodworth was a registered nurse at Loma Linda University Medical Center (the medical center) from December 2011 to June 2014. In June 2014, she filed this putative class action against the medical center, alleging a host of wage and hour claims on behalf of herself and other employees. She later amended her complaint to add a cause of action under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA). After several years of litigation, only her individual claim for failure to provide rest periods remained. The trial court had granted four motions for summary judgment in favor of the medical center, denied Woodworth’s motion for class certification, and denied her motion to strike putative class members’ declarations. Woodworth appealed those orders, which disposed of the putative class members’ claims, the PAGA claims, and all of her individual claims (apart from her claim about rest periods). The medical center moved to dismiss most of Woodworth’s appeal, but the Court of Appeal denied the motion, affirming the orders in large part. Specifically, the Court reversed in part the order denying class certification: the court erred with respect to Woodworth’s proposed wage statement class, which consisted of employees who received allegedly inaccurate wage statements. The case was remanded for the trial court to reconsider certification of that class. View "Woodworth v. Loma Linda Univ. Med. Center" on Justia Law

In August 2019, Plaintiff filed a class action against GoDaddy. The putative class alleged that the web-hosting company embarked on an unlawful telemarketing campaign. Objector-Appellant then filed an objection and moved to reconsider the fee award. He made two arguments. First, he objected that the district court awarded fees to class counsel twenty days before the court’s purported objection deadline. Second, he claimed that the parties’ settlement was a “coupon settlement” under 28 U.S.C. Section 1712(e) of the Class Action Fairness Act because GoDaddy class members could select GoDaddy vouchers as their recompense. The question at the core of this appeal is whether the plaintiffs who received a single unwanted, illegal telemarketing text message suffered a concrete injury.   The Eleventh Circuit remanded this appeal to the panel to consider the CAFA issues raised in Appellant’s appeal. The court held that the receipt of an unwanted text message causes a concrete injury. The court explained that while an unwanted text message is insufficiently offensive to satisfy the common law’s elements, Congress has used its lawmaking powers to recognize a lower quantum of injury necessary to bring a claim under the TCPA. As a result, the plaintiffs’ harm “is smaller in degree rather than entirely absent.” View "Susan Drazen, et al v. Mr. Juan Pinto" on Justia Law

This is a putative class action by three truck drivers against their employer, Domino’s Pizza. The court previously affirmed the district court’s denial of Domino’s motion to compel arbitration, holding that because the drivers were a “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” their claims were exempted from the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) by 9 U.S.C. Section 1.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying Domino Pizza’s motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action brought by three Domino truck drivers, alleging violations of California labor law. The panel stated that its prior decision squarely rested upon its reading of Rittmann v. Amazon.com, Inc., 971 F.3d 904 (9th Cir. 2020), which concerned Amazon delivery drivers. The panel found no clear conflict between Rittmann and Saxon and nothing in Saxon that undermined the panel’s prior reasoning that because the plaintiff drivers in this case, like the Amazon package delivery drivers in Rittmann, transport interstate goods for the last leg to their final destinations, they are engaged in interstate commerce under Section 1. View "EDMOND CARMONA, ET AL V. DOMINO'S PIZZA, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, on behalf of a putative class of students, sued Southern Methodist University (“SMU”) for refusing to refund tuition and fees after the university switched to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The district court dismissed Plaintiff’s complaint for failure to state a claim.   The Fifth Circuit reversed that decision in light of King v. Baylor University, 46 F.4th 344 (5th Cir. 2022), which was issued after the district court’s ruling and which teaches that Hogan adequately pled a breach-of-contract claim. Alternatively, the district court held that Texas’s Pandemic Liability Protection Act (“PLPA”) retroactively bars Plaintiff’s claim for monetary relief and is not unconstitutionally retroactive under the Texas Constitution. That latter ruling raises a determinative-but-unsettled question of state constitutional law, which the court certified to the Texas Supreme Court: Does the application of the Pandemic Liability Protection Act to Plaintiff’s breach-of-contract claim violate the retroactivity clause in article I, section 16 of the Texas Constitution? View "Hogan v. Southern Methodist Univ" on Justia Law

Marvin and Mildred Bay (“the Bays”) challenged a court order dismissing their trespass claim against Anadarko E&P Onshore LLC and Anadarko Land Corporation (collectively, “Anadarko”). Anadarko, an oil and gas company, owned the mineral rights under the Bays’ farm. The Bays brought a putative class action along with other surface landowners against Anadarko, alleging that Anadarko’s mineral lessees had exceeded the scope of their mineral rights by drilling multiple vertical wells on the surface owners’ land when it was possible to drill fewer wells of the “directional” type. At the conclusion of the Bays’ presentation of evidence, the district court found that the Bays’ evidence failed as a matter of law to demonstrate that Anadarko’s activities amounted to a trespass and dismissed the case. Finding that the district court applied the wrong legal standard, the Tenth Circuit reversed the dismissal in "Bay I," finding that Colorado’s common law of trespass required the Bays to show that Anadarko’s lessees had “materially interfered” with the Bays’ farming operations. The appellate court questioned whether the record demonstrated that the Bays met this standard in their trial, but because Anadarko had not raised this specific issue, the case was remanded to the district court for further proceedings. On remand, the district court again granted judgment as a matter of law to Anadarko on the material interference issue. Specifically, the court first held that it was bound by the Tenth Circuit's interpretation in Bay I of the material interference standard, then found that the Bays showed only that Anadarko’s conduct inconvenienced them—which was insufficient to satisfy the material interference standard. The Bays again appealed, arguing that the Tenth Circuit's discussion of the material interference standard in Bay I was dictum; thus, the district court incorrectly determined that it was bound to apply that standard. They further argued the material interference standard applied by the district court was inconsistent with the Colorado standard for trespass outlined in Gerrity Oil & Gas Corp. v. Magness, 946 P.2d 913 (Colo. 1997), and that the evidence they presented in their trial established a prima facie case of material interference under Gerrity. The Tenth Circuit determined the district court did not err in its second dismissal and affirmed judgment. View "Bay, et al. v. Anadarko E&P Onshore, et al." on Justia Law

Appellees worked as non-emergency medical transportation drivers. In July 2017, they brought a putative class action and Fair Labor Standards Act collective action against Medical Transportation Management, Inc. (“MTM”). Their complaint alleged that MTM is their employer and had failed to pay them and its other drivers their full wages as required by both federal and District of Columbia law. MTM appealed the district court’s certification of an “issue class” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(4) and its denial of MTM’s motion to decertify plaintiffs’ Fair Labor Standards Act collective action.   The DC Circuit remanded the district court’s certification of the issue class because the court failed to ensure that it satisfies the class-action criteria specified in Rules 23(a) and (b). The court declined to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction to review the district court’s separate decision on the Fair Labor Standards Act collective action. The court explained that because the resolution of the action will bind absent class members, basic principles of due process require that they be notified that their individual claims are being resolved and that they may opt out of the action if they so choose. So if the district court certifies the issue class under Rule 23(b)(3) on remand, it must direct “the best notice that is practicable” as part of any certification order. View "Isaac Harris v. Medical Transportation Management, Inc." on Justia Law