by Deepak Gupta In a 70-page opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu, the California Supreme Court on Thursday issued its eagerly anticipated decision in Sonic-Calabasas v. Moreno. Addressing the impact of both AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors for the first time, the court makes clear that unconscionability — focused on whether […]
Category Archives: Consumer Litigation
by Deepak Gupta I thought readers might be interested in a new appeal that my firm is handling in the Ninth Circuit, Moran v. The Screening Pros, concerning the state and federal regulation of background-check companies. You can read our opening brief here. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission have weighed in with an amicus […]
by Deepak Gupta We've already blogged here quite a bit in the past few days about our rehearing petition in the Third Circuit class-action case of Carrerra v. Bayer — including this post on a recent column by Alison Frankel of Reuters. Today, Frankel has a new story about the case. This time, she writes about the […]
by Deepak Gupta Back in June, I blogged about my firm's constitutional challenge to New York's credit-card surcharge law — a law that aims to protect credit card company profits by preventing merchants from communicating the true cost of credit to consumers. This morning, U.S District Judge Jed Rakoff issued a fantastic 35-page opinion agreeing […]
by Deepak Gupta Legal reporter Alison Frankel of Reuters has a new column highlighting the effort to seek full-court rehearing of the Third Circuit's troubling decision in Carrera v. Bayer, which holds that plaintiffs must show, before they can certify a class, how they will identify and prove the class membership of consumers who purchased the defendant's product. […]
by Paul Bland, Senior Attorney, Public Justice, Of Counsel, Chavez & Gertler On Twitter @PblandBland In Kennedy v. Wells Fargo, Judge King of the Southern District of Florida enforced another arbitration clause that tosses out consumer claims in the multi district litigation involving checking overdraft claims. The plaintiffs had several arguments that the particular arbitration clause at […]
by Deepak Gupta This morning, the Eighth Circuit issued its decision in Charvat v. Mutual First, reversing the dismissal of two consumer class actions on constitutional standing grounds. The district court held that the plaintiff's claims — for violations of a federal law requiring on-machine notice of ATM fees — didn't allege an "injury in […]
by Jeff Sovern A couple of weeks ago, Ira Rheingold and I had an op-ed in the Times about issues with credit reports. Almost on cue, the Associated Press reports Jury awards Oregon woman $18.6M over credit report. It seems she had been trying to get Equifax to correct errors for two years. In the op-ed, […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: Court decisions tied to the 1968 law fell 18% year over year during a12-month period that ended May 31, to 1,037, data from the National ConsumerLaw Center shows. That number is down 38% from the peak two years earlier. The pace of new litigation is also slowing. […]
An 11-judge en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument this week in Kilgore v. Keybank, an important consumer arbitration case. Kilgore presents the question whether the Federal Arbitration Act and the Supreme Court's decision in AT&T v. Concepcion require courts to enforce arbitration clauses even when they would block consumers from pursuing […]