By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Gina R. Merrill
A customer filed a class action lawsuit this past year against the owner of several well-known restaurants in Manhattan based on two novel theories. First, he alleged that any restaurant that added an “automatic” gratuity to the bill ‒ even when that gratuity was plainly disclosed
First off, Happy New Year to our Blog Readers. Thank you for your patronage last year and we look forward to another year rolling over the legal class action landscape together.
As you may have recognized, either in reading our blog or simply reading the paper, a vast majority of the consumer class docket last
Summary
Following the trial of a tobacco false advertising case dating back to 1997, a California court found that, although the defendant misrepresented to consumers the health benefits of its Marlboro Lights cigarettes, the Plaintiffs were entitled to no relief as they failed to prove entitlement to any of the limited remedies available under California’s
“Shakedown Suits”
Although California’s passage of Proposition 64 made it more difficult for the plaintiffs’ bar to bring “shakedown suits” against the business community, we are witnessing a flood of false advertising class actions brought (or, more often, threatened) against consumer product manufacturers and retailers, who typically have no arbitration rights. While some lawsuits are
On June 26, 2013, in Brown v. DirecTV, LLC, et al., Case No. 2:12-cv-08382, Judge Gee, sitting in the Central District of California, granted DirecTV’s motion to compel arbitration, rejecting two efforts by the Plaintiff to keep the matter in federal court: (1) that TCPA claims did not “arise under or relate
In one of the many food labeling cases flooding the dockets of California federal courts, U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila denied certification of two proposed classes of consumers that included potential class members who had purchased products other than the ones purchased by the named plaintiff. See Major v. Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.
On Monday June 3, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling on the case of Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Butler, sending the issue of class certification back to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in light of the Court’s recent ruling in Comcast Corp v. Behrend. The Supreme Court granted Sears,