State Farm Policy Holders Granted Class Certification in COVID-19 Insurance Recovery Class Action

On August 19, 2021, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted class certification to a statewide class of Virginia businesses in a COVID-19 insurance recovery class action.  The Court granted class certification to a class of at least 111 Virginia businesses that, between March 23 and June 20, 2020, submitted insurance claims to State Farm for pandemic-related business losses.  The losses stemmed from the COVID-19 restrictions put in place in Virginia that required many recreational businesses to close—and then only permitted them to reopen at limited capacity […]

By |2021-08-27T14:56:20-04:00August 27th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , |
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Supreme Court Rules that Courts Should Determine the Materiality of Alleged Misrepresentations at the Class Certification Stage in Private Securities Litigation

On June 21, 2021, the Supreme Court in Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., et al. v. Arkansas Teachers Retirement System, ruled in favor of Goldman Sachs in a securities-fraud class action lawsuit brought by investors. The plaintiffs alleged that Goldman Sachs maintained an artificially inflated stock price by making generic false statements in connection with their sales of securities, until the truth about Goldman Sachs’ practices were made public and the market reacted, resulting in losses to the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs sought to certify a class of Goldman Sachs shareholders that relied on such misrepresentations when investing in its […]

By |2021-07-20T17:15:42-04:00July 20th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , , |
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Supreme Court Rules that Absent Class Members Must Suffer Actual Harm to Be Part of a Class

On June 25, 2021, the Supreme Court in TransUnion v. Ramirez, held that, in order to be part of a class action and recover damages, class members must have suffered “concrete harm” to have standing under Article III of the Constitution.

This was the first time that the Supreme Court examined standing issues in the class action context since 2016, when it ruled in Spokeo v. Robbins, that mere statutory violations alone to the plaintiff, or class representative, are insufficient to establish Article III standing.

In Ramirez, a class of 8,185 individuals sued TransUnion, a credit reporting agency, […]

By |2021-06-25T16:58:20-04:00June 25th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , |
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Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Athletes on Restricting Payment of Education-Related Benefits

On June 21, 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of college athletes in their dispute with the NCAA over caps on certain education-related benefits.  In a 9-0 decision, the Court affirmed the ruling of the Ninth Circuit that the NCAA’s restrictions on certain education-related benefits to college athletes violates anti-trust laws.  Although college athletes will not receive salaries tied to their participation in athletics, they will be able to receive compensation for education-related activities and expenses—like internships, computers, and study abroad programs.

While the NCAA has defended its caps on education-related benefits as necessary to preserve […]

By |2021-06-22T10:46:11-04:00June 22nd, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , |
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Colleges and Universities Mandating COVID-19 Vaccines for Students to Return to Campus

After over a year, it appears there is finally light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.  With over 85 million Americans fully vaccinated and millions more being vaccinated each month, a semblance of normalcy is slowly beginning to return.  As a result, colleges and universities are forming plans for students to safely return to campus for something resembling a normal school year in the fall of 2021.  Key for many institutions is a requirement that returning students be fully vaccinated for COVID-19.  Georgetown University, Brown University, and the University of Notre Dame, just to name […]

By |2021-05-04T10:33:46-04:00May 4th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , , |
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The Supreme Court Narrows the TCPA’s Autodialer Provision: Facebook Can Text You

On April 1, 2021, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Noah Duguid, No. 19-511, 2021 U.S. LEXIS 1742 (U.S. Apr. 1, 2021), siding with Facebook in narrowing the federal ban on unsolicited robocalls and robotexts.   The Court held that Facebook did not violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (“TCPA”) by sending security related text messages to the Plaintiff, Noah Duguid.  Duguid sued Facebook after receiving several text messages from Facebook alerting him that someone tried to access his Facebook account from an unknown browser, when he never had a […]

By |2021-04-05T17:27:35-04:00April 5th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action, Consumer Protection|Topics: , , , |
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Update: Settlement in Facebook’s Facial Recognition Technology Suit Against Facebook

On Friday, February 26, 2021, U.S. District Court Judge, Judge Donato approved a $650 million settlement of the privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the consent of its users. This is one of the largest settlements for a privacy violation to date in the United States. We previously discussed this case last year in the blog post titled, “Class Actions and Privacy Laws – Could Facial Recognition Technology Be Changing the Face of the “injury-in-fact” Requirement for Class Actions?” As previously discussed, in the earlier post of February 2020, […]

By |2021-03-02T11:56:10-05:00March 2nd, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action, Cybersecurity & Privacy|Topics: , , |
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We’re Open: Enter At Your Own Risk

Since releasing our most recent podcast episode, athletic events and concert venues have been slowly reopening at different capacities depending on the state, but what kinds of claims are arising out of these reopenings?

Carr Maloney attorneys Matthew D. Berkowitz, Brian O’Shea, and Samantha Lewis sit down to discuss possible causations of these class action claims and how to form an argument around the defense.

Listen along to Carr Maloney’s most recent COVID-cast episode below:

By |2021-02-23T15:11:53-05:00February 23rd, 2021|Practice Areas: Podcast|Topics: , |
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Robinhood – No Longer the Heroic Outlaw Who Steals from the Rich to Give to the Poor

On January 28, 2021, Brendon Nelson filed a four-count class action lawsuit in (the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York) against Robinhood Financial, LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC and Robinhood Markets, Inc., for Breach of Contract, Breach of the Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing, Negligence, and Breach of Fiduciary Duty. This class action comes after a market frenzy fueled by traders who utilize Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum to discuss stocks, sent shares of GameStop soaring which caused losses (in the billion-dollar range) to hedge funds that were shorting the stocks.

More […]

By |2021-02-01T14:06:00-05:00February 1st, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , , , |
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Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200: Privacy in a Digital Age.

On December 3, 2020, Maximilian Klein and Sarah Grabert filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging certain privacy practices in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.  The crux of Plaintiffs’ Class Action Complaint alleges that in exchange for providing services to Facebook’s users, Facebook collected user data, allowing advertisers to use it for targeted advertising to Facebook users.  More specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Facebook and its affiliated companies (Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Oculus) used this data to target smaller companies and competitors to eliminate competition and […]

By |2021-01-21T15:57:32-05:00January 21st, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action, Cybersecurity & Privacy|Topics: , , , |
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Supreme Court to Review Class Certification Standards in Private Securities Litigation

On December 11, 2020, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., et al. v. Arkansas Teachers Retirement System, et al. No. 20-222, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 5993 (U.S. Dec. 11, 2020), to review a Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which involves issues of class certification in the context of shareholder securities class action litigation.

The questions presented on appeal are: (1) whether a defendant may rebut the Basic presumption by pointing to the generic nature of the alleged misstatements, even though that evidence is also relevant to the substantive element of materiality; […]

By |2021-01-19T10:03:49-05:00January 19th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , |
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The Supreme Court to Determine Whether Class Members Must Suffer Actual Harm

On December 16, 2020, the Supreme Court granted cert. to hear TransUnion v. Ramirez, a Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) class action suit that presents the question as to “whether either Article III (of the Constitution) or Rule 23 (of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) permits a damages class action where the vast majority of the class suffered no actual injury, let alone an injury anything like what the class representative suffered.”

In Ramirez, Ramirez was refused the purchase of a car by a dealership when his credit report incorrectly indicated that his name appeared on […]

By |2020-12-17T16:03:35-05:00December 17th, 2020|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: , , , |
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