According to a recent report by WebRecon, court filings under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) were slightly up while filings under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) remained unchanged for the month of July. Complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) were down for the month.
On August 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld a trial court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of a debt buyer holding that claim preclusion barred the plaintiff’s claims brought under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) and Utah’s Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act (UCSPA).
The modern “Information Age” has been defined by rapidly increasing interconnectivity and dependence on the internet by consumers and businesses alike. One side effect of these technological advances has been the increasing frequency of cyberattacks and data breaches perpetrated by sophisticated cyber criminals using ever-evolving methods of infiltration. And, as can be expected, along with the increase in data breaches over the past few decades, we have seen the rise of data breach litigation, and in particular, consumer class action litigation against the companies who have been victimized by those data breaches. The Fourth Circuit has seen several high-profile data breach class actions. Such class actions often face difficult uphill battles in proving the necessary elements for class certification, particularly when it comes to defining a theory of harm that can be proven by common evidence across the class. Last month, Judge Gibney of the Richmond Division of the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed one such data breach class action case for a more basic problem: the named plaintiffs could not demonstrate they had suffered any concrete injury sufficient to establish Article III standing at all, let alone damages that could be proven classwide. Holmes v. Elephant Ins. Co., No. 3:22cv487, 2023 WL 4183380 (E.D. Va. June 26, 2023).
More than two years after the Supreme Court released its ruling in Facebook v. Duguid, confirming the meaning of automatic telephone dialing systems (ATDS) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a plaintiff has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court to challenge the Ninth Circuit’s application of the Facebook decision. The Facebook ruling effectively closed the door on one of the broadest classes of TCPA-related litigation; since then, plaintiff-side advocates have worked ceaselessly, though largely unsuccessfully, to chip away at the ruling. If the Supreme Court accepts the appeal, this will represent a significant development in the ongoing saga of ATDS litigation.
Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, holding that a district court must stay its proceedings while an interlocutory appeal on the question of arbitrability is pending. The decision resolves a circuit split on the question of whether such a stay is mandatory or discretionary. Justice Kavanaugh
In Wood v. Omni Financial of Nevada, Inc., the plaintiffs filed a class action complaint alleging violations of the Military Lending Act (MLA). Specifically, the plaintiffs, two active duty service members who had entered into multiple installment loans with the defendant, alleged that the defendant violated the MLA by unlawfully: 1) extending loans with
In Schmitt v. Security National Servicing Corporation, the plaintiff filed a class action complaint alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and Ohio Residential Mortgage Lending Act (RMLA) premised on the assertion that her loan documents did not provide for the imposition of late fees after acceleration of the loan. The
On May 10, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal issued an opinion in Pet Supermarket, Inc. v. Eldridge, holding that the plaintiff and putative class representative lacked standing to pursue his class action lawsuit under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In Eldridge, the plaintiff visited a Pet Supermarket store where he learned
On May 2, the Florida legislature passed amendments to the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA) that would drastically narrow its scope and presumably cut down on the number of class actions filed pursuant to it. The bill will take effect immediately after it is signed by Governor DeSantis.
Among other things, the proposed amendments would:
On April 12, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated an $8 million class-action settlement for lack of standing. While the issue was not raised by the district court or either party on appeal, the court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek injunctive relief because they did not allege they planned to purchase