Newsletter RSS

Mealey's Class Actions

  • April 11, 2025

    Appeals Court Revives 2 BIPA Suits Over Nursing Homes’ Biometric Timeclocks

    MT. VERNON, Ill. — In a pair of almost identical unpublished opinions, a Fifth District Appellate Court of Illinois panel reversed a trial court’s dismissal of two putative class actions by former employees alleging violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) via nursing facilities’ use of biometric timeclocks.

  • April 11, 2025

    Consolidated Suit Over Medical Device Firm’s Data Breach Partly Dismissed

    BOSTON — A Massachusetts federal judge partly granted a medical device manufacturer’s motion to dismiss putative class claims against it stemming from a data breach, disposing of a fiduciary duty claim and several state law consumer protection claims, while largely allowing negligence, unjust enrichment and implied contract claims to proceed.

  • April 11, 2025

    Illinois Genetic Privacy Act Does Not Apply To Life Insurance, Judge Rules

    EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — The Illinois Genetic Privacy Act (GIPA) “does not apply to the underwriting practices concerning life insurance policies,” an Illinois federal judge found, granting an insurer’s motion to dismiss a putative class claim under GIPA brought against it by a woman who claimed that she was denied a life insurance policy based on information she provided about her family’s medical history.

  • April 11, 2025

    9th Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of Securities Case Against Gaming Company

    PASADENA, Calif. — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed the dismissal of a pension fund’s suit alleging that a gaming company falsely inflated its share price, finding that the pension fund failed to adequately plead its securities claims.

  • April 10, 2025

    2 TROs, 1 Class Certification Granted In Cases Challenging AEA Immigrant Removals

    Two temporary restraining orders and one class certification order were granted April 9 by federal judges in Texas and New York in two cases brought by immigrant detainees being held in those jurisdictions who are challenging their removals from the United Staes under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA); the habeas corpus filings by the immigrants and subsequent orders were all filed within two days after a divided U.S. Supreme Court vacated a temporary restraining order (TRO) and provisional class certification granted to the immigrants by a federal judge in the District of Columbia and ruled that the immigrants’ claims for relief “fall within the ‘core’ of the writ of habeas corpus and thus must be brought in habeas” and that the proper “venue lies in the district of confinement.”

  • April 10, 2025

    Class Suit Against OnlyFans Over ‘Chatter’ Scheme May Proceed Anonymously

    SANTA ANA, Calif. — A California federal judge on April 9 declined to dismiss putative class claims brought by California subscribers of adult website OnlyFans for an alleged “chatter scheme” in which they were allegedly deceived into paying to communicate with adult content creators, but instead were connected to “professional chatters,” and said the plaintiffs may proceed anonymously to avoid the risk of embarrassment from revealing private messages discussing their “sexual interests.”

  • April 10, 2025

    University Sued Over Lax Data Security, Delay In Breach Notification

    CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A university that took more than a year to notify affected individuals that their personally identifiable information (PII) was compromised in a data breach was hit with a putative class complaint in Tennessee federal court, with a prospective student alleging negligence and invasion of privacy.

  • April 09, 2025

    Class Certification Bid Fails In ERISA Early Retirement Equivalence Case

    MINNEAPOLIS — Plaintiffs who allege that early retirement benefits provided by their pension plan violate an Employee Retirement Income Security Act actuarial equivalence requirement saw their motion for class certification denied, with a Minnesota federal judge concluding that the proposed class had commonality and typicality problems.

  • April 09, 2025

    U.S. High Court Declines To Hear Appeal Of Detainee Wage Collective, Class Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a Maryland county seeking a ruling on “[w]hether inmates working in furtherance of public works projects for the government charged with their custody and care” are employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

  • April 09, 2025

    Federal Judge Approves Lyft Shareholder Derivative Settlement Requiring Reforms

    OAKLAND, Calif. — A federal judge in California granted final approval to a settlement in a shareholder derivative class action brought against Lyft Inc., under which the company agrees to implement several safety reforms.

  • April 09, 2025

    Google, Class Plaintiffs Settle 14-Year-Old AdWords Suit For $100M

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — A consumer and his company representing two certified classes of advertisers who claim that Google LLC misrepresented the benefits of its AdWords advertising service have moved in California federal court for preliminary approval of a $100 million settlement to claims against Google first filed in 2011 and say their attorneys will seek a 33% attorney fees award.

  • April 09, 2025

    7th Circuit Revives MeTV VPPA Suit, Finds Website Users Are ‘Subscribers’

    CHICAGO — Reversing a trial court’s dismissal of a Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) putative class claim over the operator of MeTV sharing website users’ online viewing histories with Facebook, a Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel concluded that the plaintiffs qualify as “subscribers” or “consumers” under the act because they provided something of value — their personally identifiable information (PII) — in exchange for a subscription to the website.

  • April 09, 2025

    Federal Judge Grants Final Approval Of $433.5M Securities Fraud Settlement

    NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York has granted final approval of a $433.5 million settlement to end a securities fraud class action brought by investors against a Cayman Islands corporation headquartered in Hangzhou, China, and current and former executives for allegedly violating federal securities laws by making misrepresentations regarding the initial public offering of another company in which the defendant company owned a 33% equity interest and not disclosing material facts surrounding an investigation by Chinese regulators into allegedly illegal merchant exclusivity practices.

  • April 09, 2025

    Harriet Carter Website User Had ‘Constructive Notice’ Of Interception, Judge Rules

    PITTSBURGH — Even though a consumer opted not to review the privacy statement on Harriet Carter Gifts Inc.’s website, a Pennsylvania federal judge found that she gave her implied consent to a third party’s interception of her communications because the practice was fully disclosed in the statement.

  • April 08, 2025

    Montana City Sues 3M, Others For Making Firefighting Gear With PFAS

    BUTTE, Mont. — A municipality in Montana has filed a class action against 3M Co., DuPont de Nemours Inc. and others in Montana federal court seeking compensatory and punitive damages because they made what is called “turnout gear” for firefighters that contained per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which the plaintiff says is causing firefighters to develop cancer “at an alarming rate higher than the general population.”

  • April 08, 2025

    Split U.S. High Court Vacates TRO Orders In Immigrant Removal Class Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A divided U.S. Supreme Court on April 7 in a per curiam opinion vacated a trial court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) and an order extending the TRO issued in a class case over the removal of immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), declining to reach the argument as to whether the immigrants in question fall under the AEA but opining that their claims for relief “fall within the ‘core’ of the writ of habeas corpus and thus must be brought in habeas” and that the proper “venue lies in the district of confinement.”

  • April 08, 2025

    Los Angeles Seeks Review Of Summary Judgment Reversal In Parking Fine Class Suit

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A split Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel erred when it reversed summary judgment for Los Angeles in a putative class complaint challenging the city’s parking fee and late payment penalty, the city argues in its petition for a writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide a government’s burden of proof when defending itself against an excessive fines claim.

  • April 07, 2025

    Judge Handles Exclusion Bids, Denies Summary Judgment In Excessive Fee Case

    WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A class action over a retirement plan’s record-keeping fees and share classes is progressing toward a bench trial after a North Carolina federal judge granted two of the defendant’s three reliability challenges as to expert opinions and then cited competing expert opinions in denying summary judgment.

  • April 07, 2025

    1 Settlement OK’d In MOVEit Data Breach MDL; Attorney Fees Sought In Another

    BOSTON — The day after a Massachusetts federal judge granted final approval to a $2.8 million settlement with a health care billing firm that is one of the defendants in a multidistrict litigation over a 2023 ransomware attack that affected users of the MOVEit file-transfer app, the lead defendant in another component suit in the MDL, which had a $9.95 million settlement preliminarily approved in September, on April 4 filed a motion for attorney fees.

  • April 07, 2025

    Citing ‘Too Late’ Arguments, 2nd Circuit Affirms Residual Annuities Ruling

    NEW YORK — Saying in an unpublished April 4 summary order that the trial court correctly applied the law-of-the-case doctrine in a long-running Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action over residual annuities, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld entry of a revised final judgment; the appeal concerned a preretirement mortality discount (PRMD) and interest rate for projecting forward employee contributions.

  • April 07, 2025

    More Than $12M In Attorney Fees, Expenses Awarded After Apple Gift Card Settlement

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal judge in California, over objections by Apple Inc. and Apple Value Services LLC (together, Apple), granted approval of $11.65 million in attorney fees and more than $500,000 in expenses sought by the plaintiffs and class counsel as part of a $35 million settlement in a case over an alleged iTunes gift card scam.

  • April 07, 2025

    Pa. Voter Files Class Suit Over Promised Payments For America PAC Petition Referrals

    PHILADELPHIA — America PAC, Group America LLC and Elon Musk violated the Pennsylvania law when they failed to fulfill offers of payments to Pennsylvania voters who signed or referred others to sign America PAC’s petition supporting the First and Second amendments to the U.S. Constitution, a Pennsylvania voter and canvasser alleges in a class complaint filed in a federal court in that state.

  • April 04, 2025

    ERISA Meaningful Benchmark Issue Is Focus Of U.S. High Court Review Petition

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Noting that their unsuccessful petition for en banc rehearing of the 2-1 decision was supported by six amici curiae, a retirement plan sponsor and related petitioners asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ revival of a putative class action concerning retention of a passively managed Northern Trust Focus Funds suite of target date funds (TDFs) and choice of share classes.

  • April 04, 2025

    Judge Approves $15 Million Settlement Of Cash App Data Breach Class Action

    SAN FRANCISCO — Almost 10 months after a California federal judge preliminarily approved a $15 million settlement of a consolidated class action against the owners of Cash App over a pair of data breaches that exposed users’ personally identifiable information (PII) and account data, the judge granted the named plaintiffs’ motion for final approval, settling 16 claims, including negligence, fraud, invasion of privacy and unfair competition.

  • April 03, 2025

    AI Copyright Plaintiffs Ask Judge To Confirm Extension After Discovery Breach

    SAN FRANCISCO — Artificial intelligence copyright plaintiffs on April 2 asked a federal judge in California to enforce a recent ruling granting more time to respond to a summary judgment motion as result of the violation of a discovery agreement, saying the failure to turn over what the court already recognized as relevant evidence and its broad privilege claims are making responding “burdensome.”