Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Heckman v. Live Nation Entertainment, where it affirmed a district order denying a motion to compel mass arbitration of a consumer antitrust class action about online ticket sales practices by Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Finding the arbitration agreement “borderline unintelligible,” the panel majority held that both the […]
Category Archives: Consumer Litigation
In Guidotti v. Legal Helpers Debt Resolution, L.L.C., 716 F.3d 764 (3d Cir. 2013), the Third Circuit addressed the question of, when considering a motion to compel arbitration, what standards district courts should apply when determining whether an agreement to arbitrate was actually formed between the parties. The court held that the Rule 12(b)(6) standard […]
Enacted in 1988, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) makes it unlawful for a “video tape service provider” to “knowingly disclose[], to any person, personally identifiable information concerning any consumer of such provider.” The statute further defines “consumer” as “any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider.” The […]
Yesterday, I noted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had agreed to hear a case involving browse-wrap arbitration agreements. Later in the day, the Seventh Circuit issued a decision concerning one such agreement, finding that a consumer and a home improvement had entered into a valid and enforceable agreement. Adopting case law from the 9th and 2nd […]
Two consumers sued Experian after discovering the agency, was reporting an automobile loan as “discharged through bankruptcy,” when they had been making payments on the loan for years, and their attempts to correct the issue proved unsuccessful. For some reason, Experian responded by issuing sweeping discovery requests — including broad subpoenas issued to the law […]
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, many consumers have been unable to obtain relief for violations of their statutory rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Yesterday’s decision by the Sixth Circuit in Merck v. Walmart, Inc. is another case in that line. The plaintiff, Thomas Merck, had been extended a job […]
Often, consumers are arguing that they cannot be bound to certain terms because they never saw them, or lacked a sufficient opportunity to review them, before entering into a relationship with a business. Today, the Eleventh Circuit addressed a different scenario — where a company was arguing that the terms and conditions it presented to […]
In 2018, a consumer brought a putative FDCPA class action based on a letter naming the collection arm of her credit card company, rather than the credit card company itself, as the “current/original creditor.” A federal district court granted the defendant’s motion to compel arbitration, and the parties arbitrated the dispute. After 4 years of […]
Here (behind paywall). it would be a ballot referendum. The argument in favor of the referendum is that it would protect clients from lawyers charging excessive fees. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Many legal experts said a ceiling of 20 percent would make it financially difficult for many lawyers to take on complex cases […]
In order to state a claim for deceptive practices, many state consumer protection laws require plaintiffs to prove that the challenged acts or practices are “likely to deceive reasonable consumers.” In an opinion issued today, the Seventh Circuit grappled with the question of what exactly that means. The opinion comes in a class action brought […]