SCOTUS - The Class Action Blog by Carr Maloney PC

Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Case Regarding Section 11 Liability for Direct Listings

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a landmark case regarding Section 11 liability for companies going public on the New York Stock Exchange through direct listings. In 2018, the New York Stock Exchange introduced a new rule, later approved by the SEC, that allowed companies to go public using a “Selling Shareholder Direct Floor Listing,” or a direct listing. Direct listing permits a company to go public for the first time just by filing a registration statement to allow existing shareholders to sell their shares on the exchange. Under the previous method, an initial public […]

By Kelsey Williams|2022-12-27T11:30:31-05:00December 27th, 2022|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: Investor Rights, New York Stock Exchange, SCOTUS, Section 11 liability, Securities Act, Slack|

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Supreme Court to Consider Waiver of Right to Arbitration in Employee Wage and Hour Case

On November 15, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear a case by a former Taco Bell employee, Robyn Morgan, regarding her former employer’s right to compel arbitration in her wage and hour case. Morgan’s claims stem from her allegation that her former employer and Taco Bell franchisee, Sundance, Inc., failed to pay her time-and-a-half for overtime. Specifically, Morgan alleges that Sundance recorded her worktime across multiple weeks to keep her time under forty hours per week. Sundance answered Morgan’s Complaint and litigated the case for eight months. It then moved to compel arbitration […]

By Matthew D. Berkowitz and Brian O’Shea|2021-11-30T15:57:22-05:00November 18th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action, Labor & Employment|Topics: Arbitration, SCOTUS, Taco Bell, wage and hour|

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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 Samantha Lewis and Matthew D. Berkowitz|2021-07-20T17:15:42-04:00July 20th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: Conflict of Interest, Goldman Sachs, SCOTUS, Subprime Securities|

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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 Matthew D. Berkowitz|2021-06-25T16:58:20-04:00June 25th, 2021|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: Article III, Fair Credit Reporting Act, SCOTUS|

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SCOTUS Restricts Rights of Defined Benefit Retirement Plan Participants Under ERISA

On June 1, 2020 and in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that participants in a defined-benefit retirement plan lacked Article III standing to bring a lawsuit against the plan’s fiduciaries under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). Thole v. U.S. Bank, N.A., No. 17-1712. Plaintiffs James Thole and Sherry Smith are retired participants of U.S. Bank’s defined-benefit retirement plan. Under the terms of the plan, plaintiffs are guaranteed a fixed payment each month regardless of the plan’s value or the fiduciaries’ investment decisions with respect to the plan. Plaintiffs have […]

By Samantha Lewis|2020-06-17T14:35:55-04:00June 17th, 2020|Practice Areas: Class Action, Labor & Employment|Topics: ERISA, SCOTUS|

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Free Speech and the TCPA: How an Upcoming Supreme Court Decision May Affect the TCPA and Impact Businesses

On January 10, 2020, the Supreme Court agreed to review a Fourth Circuit decision challenging the constitutionality of an exemption to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (the “TCPA”). See Barr v. American Ass’n of Political Consultants, No. 19-631.

The TCPA was enacted in 1991 in response to unwanted, automated phone calls that affect many Americans on a daily basis. The TCPA broadly prohibits telephone solicitation through the use of “automatic telephone dialing systems.” See 47 U.S.C. § 227. However, in response to the rapid technological advancements since 1991, Congress has curtailed the provisions of the […]

By Samantha Lewis and Matthew D. Berkowitz|2020-05-08T14:26:37-04:00February 24th, 2020|Practice Areas: Class Action|Topics: SCOTUS, Telephone Consumer Protection Act|

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