$26.7 million victory for CCAF in Citigroup Securities case

Details at Point of Law.

Our first cert petition, challenging Facebook Beacon cy pres settlement

We weren't involved in the 2-1 Lane v. Facebook cy pres decision disadvantaging consumers, and jumped at the opportunity to challenge it in the Supreme Court. On Friday (with generous pro bono work from BakerHostetler) we filed our first cert petition, and the first substantive request that the Supreme Court clarify the law of cy pres, a unique public-policy problem that both the Chamber of Commerce and Public Citizen agree upon. 

The Center has previously won such landmark cy pres decisions as In re Baby Products Antitrust Litigation and Nachshin v. AOL. I testified about the problem before a House Subcommittee in March, and will be speaking on an ABA panel on the subject in Boston in October. 

Redman v. Radio Shack

Redman v. Radio Shack Corp., No. 11-cv-06741 (N.D. Ill.) is a class action alleging a right to statutory recovery for Radio Shack's practice of printing expiration dates on credit-card receipts. The settlement provides $1M in attorneys' fees and $10 coupons to the class, without any mechanism to track redemptions required to justify such a large fee. Of course, there will be nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of claims comprising "settlement value" given the difficulty of making a claim, so the settlement also provide cy pres of leftover coupons to the Boys and Girls Club. Except Section 1712(e) of the Class Action Fairness Act explicitly prohibits the use of cy pres coupons for calculating fee awards. The settlement class is defined as

All persons who, between August 24, 2010 and November 21, 2011, paid by credit or debit card for products or services and received an electronically-printed receipt from any Store that contained the expiration date of the person's credit or debit card.

Excluded from the Settlement Class are Defendant, its officers, employees, and attorneys; transactions conducted with business credit or debit cards; and transactions made with RadioShack-branded debit or credit cards, as those cards do not contain expiration dates.

One hopes a class member aggrieved by this lawyers-first settlement will contact a non-profit attorney willing to help them object to a settlement with such an unfair and illegal fee request.

Victory in HP Inkjet

A 2-1 decision of the Ninth Circuit agreed with us that the district court incorrectly applied the coupon-valuation provision of the Class Action Fairness Act in the HP Inkjet case. Details (and a list of press coverage) at Point of Law. After two appellate wins in 2011, and two in 2012, this is our third in 2013, and the year isn't half over.

This week's fairness hearing on the Southwest drink voucher class action settlement raised similar issues and discussed the import of the Inkjet decision; plaintiffs' counsel there claimed that they were told by Inkjet counsel that they plan to seek en banc review. If they do, the petition would be due next week.

Update in Apple MagSafe settlement Ninth Circuit appeal

CCAF filed an opening brief in October; after many delays in the briefing schedule, we filed our reply brief in April. Details at Point of Law.

Southwest Drink Voucher objection

I've previously discussed the problems with the Southwest Drink Voucher coupon settlement, and CCAF attorney Melissa Holyoak is representing a class member objecting to the settlement.

Fraley v. Facebook

Lots of class members forwarded me their notices in this settlement, which is likely to pay the class zero; if it pays anything, it will only be because the claims process freezes out tens of millions of class members. The attorneys, however, are asking for $7.5 million.We've objected; details at Point of Law. A district court threw out an earlier version of the settlement on Bluetooth grounds; it's hard to see how this one will pass muster.