Justia Civil Procedure Opinion Summaries

Fox and others failed to pay some of their property taxes. The counties foreclosed on and sold their properties and kept all of the sale proceeds, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars beyond the taxes due. Fox filed this class action. While Fox’s class action was pending, the Michigan Supreme Court held that the counties’ practice violated the Michigan Constitution’s Takings Clause. The Michigan legislature then began crafting a statutory process for recovering the proceeds. ARI then began contacting potential plaintiffs about pursuing relief on their behalf. Meanwhile, the district court certified Fox’s class. ARI instructed the law firm it hired to opt-out ARI-represented claimants and pursue individual relief on their behalf. Fox believed that ARI was improperly soliciting class members.The district court ordered ARI to stop contacting class members and allow 32 class members to back out of their agreements with ARI. The Sixth Circuit affirmed in part. The district court has the authority to protect the class-action process and did not abuse its discretion when it acted to protect class members from ARI’s post-certification communications. While most of the order was justified, the district court abused its discretion by allowing class members who hired ARI before the class was certified to rescind their agreements. View "Fox v. Saginaw County," on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a putative class action lawsuit against brokerage firm Hornor, Townsend & Kent (“HTK”) and its parent company The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company. The complaint alleged that HTK breached its fiduciary duties under Georgia law and that Penn Mutual aided and abetted that breach. The district court concluded that the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (“SLUSA”) barred Plaintiff from using a class action to bring those state law claims.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal. The court explained that SLUSA’s bar applies when “(1) the suit is a ‘covered class action,’ (2) the plaintiffs’ claims are based on state law, (3) one or more ‘covered securities’ has been purchased or sold, and (4) the defendant [allegedly] misrepresented or omitted a material fact ‘in connection with the purchase or sale of such security.’”Here, the only disputed issue is whether Plaintiff’s complaint alleges a misrepresentation or omission. The court reasoned that the district court correctly dismissed the actions because the complaint alleges “an untrue statement or omission of material fact in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered security." View "Jeffrey A. Cochran v. The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, et al" on Justia Law

In January 2019, Ali brought this civil rights action against Chicago and several police officers, alleging that the officers followed a city policy “of refusing to release on bond an arrestee taken into custody on an arrest warrant issued by an Illinois state court outside of Cook County.” Days before the deadline for completing fact discovery, Ali moved to certify a class. The district court granted the city’s motion to strike, noting that Ali had not added class allegations to his complaint. Ali sought leave to amend his complaint to include class allegations, arguing that he did not have evidentiary support for the existence of the city policy until a November 2019 deposition. The city replied that it had acknowledged the policy months earlier. The district court denied Ali's motion. Weeks later, Ali settled his case.On January 25, the district court dismissed the case without prejudice. Also on January 25, Miller moved to intervene under Rule 24, asserting that he was a member of Ali’s proposed class. With his motion to intervene pending, Miller filed a notice of appeal from the January 25 order. On March 24, with that appeal pending, the district court denied Miller’s motion to intervene as untimely. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. There was no operative class action complaint. Miller’s motion to intervene was untimely; he is not a party to the lawsuit and cannot pursue other challenges. View "Miller v. City of Chicago" on Justia Law

This putative class action against California and San Diego County officials challenged California Governor Gavin Newsom’s emergency orders and related public health directives restricting business operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Plaintiffs, owners of affected restaurants and gyms (Owners), primarily contended the orders were procedurally invalid because they were adopted without complying with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Furthermore, Owners contended that the business restrictions were substantively invalid because they effected a taking without compensation, violating the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Rejecting these claims, the superior court sustained demurrers to the third amended complaint without leave to amend and dismissed the action. While the Court of Appeal sympathized with the position some Owners find themselves in and the significant financial losses they alleged, the unambiguous terms of the Emergency Services Act and controlling United States Supreme Court regulatory takings caselaw required that the judgment be affirmed. View "640 Tenth, LP v. Newsom" on Justia Law

In the Automotive Parts Antitrust multi-district litigation, a subset of consumers and businesses (End-Payor Plaintiffs), alleged that automotive-part manufacturers fixed prices in violation of antitrust laws and that they paid elevated prices for defendants’ parts or purchased or leased vehicles containing those parts. After eight years of motions, negotiations, approval hearings, and objections, the district court granted final approval to settlements between End-Payor Plaintiffs and defendants. The settlement agreements, the class notices, and plans of allocation for each settlement agreement defined the classes of plaintiffs to include consumers and businesses that bought or leased certain qualifying vehicles or paid to replace certain qualifying vehicle parts during designated time periods. The class definitions did not include insurers, assignees, or subrogees.FRS, a third-party company that manages and files claims for clients, later submitted claims on behalf of insurers that purchased or leased eligible vehicles for company use (Fleet Vehicles) and claims that are based on its clients’ claimed “subrogation rights” to class members’ claims. The district court denied FRS’s motion to intervene as untimely. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. FRS offers no legitimate excuse for failing to intervene after End-Payor Plaintiffs repeatedly expressed their adverse position; the district court alerted FRS to a deficient filing. End-Payor Plaintiffs would have suffered delay-related prejudice had the district court allowed intervention. View "Automotive Parts Antitrust Litig." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs Nicole Leshane, Steve Garner, Justin Prasad, Isaac Saldana, and Maurice West sued defendants Tracy VW, Inc. and RJ Gill Ventures, Inc. alleging several Labor Code violations. Plaintiffs brought suit on behalf of themselves as defendants’ former employees, on behalf of others similarly situated, and on behalf of the state pursuant to the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004. After defendants filed a petition to compel arbitration, plaintiffs filed a first amended complaint alleging violations of the Labor Code solely as representatives of the state under the Private Attorneys General Act. Defendants continued to seek arbitration of plaintiffs’ individual claims and dismissal of their class-wide claims pursuant to the arbitration agreements each plaintiff signed. The trial court denied defendants’ petition to compel arbitration finding plaintiffs’ claim under the Private Attorneys General Act was not subject to arbitration citing Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348 (2014). Defendants appealed the trial court’s order. Finding no reversible error in the trial court's judgment, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "Leshane v. Tracy VW, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs purchased notary services at New Jersey UPS stores and, in class action complaints, alleged they were charged an amount that exceeded the $2.50 fee permitted by New Jersey law. Neither complaint alleged that the amount in controversy exceeded $5 million. During discovery, while an appeal from the denial of a motion to dismiss was pending, UPS produced a spreadsheet showing that the New Jersey UPS stores had more than one million notary transactions during the six-year class period, which established an amount in controversy that satisfied federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). UPS removed both complaints to federal court. The district court remanded, reasoning that UPS could have performed the required calculation when the spreadsheet was produced in December 2020, so the removal petitions filed months later were untimely. The court did not consider whether CAFA’s local controversy exception required remand.The Third Circuit vacated. The removal statute requires removal within 30 days of service of a pleading that demonstrates the existence of federal jurisdiction or within 30 days of the date on which a defendant receives an amended pleading, motion, order, or other paper that discloses federal jurisdiction. Here, the initial pleadings did not demonstrate the existence of federal jurisdiction. UPS never received any paper that disclosed jurisdiction, so removal was timely. The court remanded for consideration of the local controversy exception. View "McLaren v. The UPS Store Inc" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought Title IX claims for failure to provide equal treatment and benefits, failure to provide equal opportunities to male and female athletes, and retaliation against female athletes when they brought up Title IX compliance to high school administrators. The district court denied Plaintiff’s motion for class certification, finding that they failed to meet the numerosity requirement under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a).The Ninth Circuit reversed. Rule 23(a)(1) requires a party seeking class certification to prove that “the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable.” The proposed class of plaintiffs at the time of filing exceeded 300. Additionally, the district court failed to consider the future students who also fell within the class. To satisfy the numerosity element of Rule 23(a) Plaintiffs do not need to show that the joinder of all possible class members is impossible, only that it is impracticable. The court also found Plaintiffs’ other claims met Rule 23(a)’s requirements, remanding the case for the district court to determine whether Plaintiffs satisfied Rule 23(b). View "A. B. V. HAWAII STATE DEPT OF EDUC." on Justia Law

The plaintiffs in this case were employees at three separate carpet manufacturing facilities operated by defendant Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc. (Royalty), also known as Royalty Carpet Mills, LLC. They alleged representative claims under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), and class claims primarily based on purported meal and rest period violations. They sought premium pay under Labor Code section 226.7 for these violations and asserted derivative claims for waiting time and wage statement penalties, among others. The trial court initially certified two classes: one for employees that worked at a facility in Porterville (the Porterville class) and another for employees that worked in two separate facilities in Orange County (the Dyer/Derian class). Following the presentation of evidence at trial, the court decertified the Dyer/Derian class and entered judgment. The results were mixed and both sides appealed. The Court of Appeal agreed with three of Plaintiffs' six contentions: the court erred in failing to apply the relation back doctrine, in decertifying the Dyer/Derian class, and dismissing the PAGA claims as unmanageable. The case was remanded for further proceedings. View "Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc." on Justia Law

A putative class action against Roadrunner on behalf of all of Roadrunner’s California current and former hourly workers, alleged violations of California wage and hour laws. Roadrunner removed the case to federal court, invoking the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), 28 U.S.C. 1711. The district court found that Roadrunner failed to establish the requisite $5 million minimum amount in controversy, and remanded the case to state court.The Ninth Circuit reversed The district court erred in imposing a presumption against CAFA jurisdiction, imposing “an inappropriate demand of certitude from Roadrunner.” Because the plaintiff contested removal, Roadrunner was required to show the amount in controversy by a preponderance of the evidence. Roadrunner offered substantial evidence and identified assumptions to support its valuation of each claim. The district court erred in assigning a $0 value to five claims where it disagreed with Roadrunner’s calculations. Nothing in CAFA or caselaw “compels such a draconian response when the district court disagrees with a single assumption underlying the claim valuation.” The CAFA amount in controversy requirement was met; using the lowest hourly wage rate identified by the court, the minimum wage claim was reasonably valued at $4.5 million, plus the $2.1 million for two claims accepted by the district court. View "Jauregui v. Roadrunner Transportation Services, Inc." on Justia Law