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Mealey's Class Actions

  • April 17, 2026

    Hawaii Judge Denies $20.25M Attorney Fee Request After Maui Fire Settlement

    WAILUKU, Hawaii — A more than $4 billion global settlement that included a $135 million class settlement fund for those who suffered losses as a result of August 2023 wildfires in Hawaii was the result “of the work of remarkable people exercising herculean efforts,” but class counsel’s request for $20.25 million for fees that included nearly $1 million for Hawaii’s General Excise Tax (GET) is unreasonable as “[i]t would defy credulity that the taxpayers would not only pay attorneys fees but also the taxes owed upon it,” a Hawaii judge ruled, adding in a footnote that the taxes are “a matter of contract between the attorney and client.”

  • April 16, 2026

    Soda Company’s $8.9M Settlement For ‘Prebiotic’ Claims Gets Final OK

    SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge granted final approval to an $8.9 million settlement resolving claims brought against the manufacturer of a soda product for violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws by deceptively labeling its soda as “Prebiotic” and “gut healthy,” but withheld implementation of the settlement pending a final decision on attorney fees.

  • April 16, 2026

    Mass. High Court: IOLTA Committee Can Appeal Class Settlement Notice, Not Fairness

    BOSTON — The Massachusetts Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) Committee can appeal following a class settlement approval to challenge an alleged failure to provide timely notice of the settlement or the opportunity to be heard on whether it should receive residual funds, but the committee lacks standing to contest a “settlement’s over-all fairness, reasonableness, or adequacy, or otherwise attack the validity of its terms,” the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a landlord/tenant class dispute.

  • April 16, 2026

    Attorney Fee Distribution Upheld After Anticompetitive Tying Class Settlement

    SAN FRANCISCO — The court-appointed lead class counsel in a more than decade-long lawsuit accusing Sutter Health of monopolizing northern California hospital markets to raise prices and decrease competition had the authority to allocate attorney fees to multiple firms following a $228.5 million settlement approved in November and did so in a “reasonable and fair” manner, a federal magistrate judge in California ruled, denying a motion by one of the firms to enforce the order awarding fees.

  • April 15, 2026

    Plaintiffs’ Amend PFAS Smartwatch Case Against Apple, Adding Proposed Subclasses

    SAN FRANCISCO — A putative class has filed a second amended complaint in California federal court against Apple Inc., alleging that its smartwatch bands contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), adding proposed subclasses and striking some claims.

  • April 14, 2026

    Washington, Detainees Oppose High Court Petition In Wage Class Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The state of Washington and immigration detainees separately oppose a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the operator of immigration detention centers across the United States which is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause permits a state to find detainees participating in a voluntary work program as employees who are owed state-mandated minimum wages rather than the $1 per day wage most were making.

  • April 14, 2026

    Tesla Driver Defends Class Certification Based On Unfair ‘Self-Driving’ Claims

    SAN FRANCISCO — The representative of a putative class of drivers suing Tesla Inc. and its affiliates on April 13 filed a brief urging the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to affirm the certification of a class action against Tesla for unfairly marketing cars as having “self-driving” technology in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL), asserting that the evidence supported “an inference of class exposure and materiality to a reasonable consumer.”

  • April 14, 2026

    TPS Holders To High Court: INA Doesn’t Bar Court Review Of Designation Termination

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A court may, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), review the Homeland Security secretary’s designation of temporary protected status (TPS) and the termination of such designation, Syrian nationals with TPS or pending applications for TPS and Haitian TPS holders argue in separate respondent briefs filed April 13 in putative class cases consolidated by the U.S. Supreme Court and scheduled oral argument for April 29.

  • April 14, 2026

    ERISA Suit Over Zepbound Coverage For Apnea Mostly Survives Dismissal

    INDIANAPOLIS — A health insurance plan participant who invoked the Employee Retirement Income Security Act in a putative class action seeking to get the prescription drug Zepbound covered as a treatment for her obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) mostly prevailed over dismissal motions, with an Indiana federal judge trimming one claim but otherwise allowing the suit against the plan administrator and its parent company to proceed.

  • April 14, 2026

    Settlement Of More Than $7.6M Approved In Swimming Competition Antitrust Suit

    SAN FRANCISCO — World Aquatics (formerly known as Fédération Internationale de Natation [FINA]) will pay $7,627,084 and change restrictions for professional swimmers to end a more than seven-year-long class lawsuit by swimmers who accused it of antitrust violations arising from its control of international swimming competitions and swimmers’ pay, according to an order by a federal judge in California granting final settlement approval.

  • April 13, 2026

    Plaintiffs Still Mostly Prevail At Dismissal In Tobacco Surcharge Cases

    As the number of health plan sponsors facing putative class lawsuits over tobacco surcharges keeps rising, plaintiffs continue to get claims past dismissal most of the time, but in the last month one case has been dismissed while four survived dismissal wholly or in part; additionally, a similar case that slightly preceded the wave was ruled time-barred at summary judgment.

  • April 10, 2026

    Consolidated Class Suit Over UPenn Alumni Data Breach Transferred To Texas

    PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge in Pennsylvania granted a joint motion to transfer a consolidated class lawsuit over an October 2025 breach of University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) Department of Alumni Relations (DAR) systems and a fall 2025 data breach of Oracle Corp.’s E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS) to Texas where there is a consolidated data breach action pending against the trustees of UPenn and others related to the Oracle EBS breach.

  • April 10, 2026

    Partial Dismissal Granted In Class Suit Over DraftKings ‘Deceptive’ Advertising

    PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania federal judge dismissed in part a putative class action against DraftKings Inc., a gambling company that offers online betting, and related entities, asserting claims for violations of a Pennsylvania consumer protection law, unjust enrichment and intentional misrepresentation related to “deceptive” advertising for certain betting promotions, finding that some of the claims under state law failed because the plaintiffs did not show “ascertainable loss” and the losses asserted were “inherently speculative.”

  • April 10, 2026

    AI Hiring Startup Hit With Data Breach Class Suit After Supply Chain Attack

    SAN FRANCISCO — A New York man filed a class complaint in a federal court in California seeking monetary and equitable relief for a putative class of former contract workers and customers of a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence hiring startup whose data was allegedly stolen due to a supply chain attack.

  • April 10, 2026

    Judge Approves $12.5M Deal To End Stock Drop Suit Against Health Care Company

    NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York granted final approval to a $12.5 million settlement entered into by investors and a health care company and its president to end a suit the investors brought alleging the defendants misled investors about the president’s education and the company’s contracts.

  • April 10, 2026

    4 Settlements Totaling $44.05M OK’d In Home Sellers’ Commissions Conspiracy Case

    ATLANTA — Four real estate brokerages will pay a total of $44.05 million to end home sellers’ putative class claims accusing them of engaging in a nationwide conspiracy with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and other brokerages to artificially inflate broker compensation, according to settlement agreements that were granted final approval by a federal judge in Georgia over two objections, one of which was made by plaintiffs in two similar class suits who accused two of the settling defendants of conducting a “reverse auction.”

  • April 10, 2026

    Judge: Retirees Have Standing To Challenge PRT But Didn’t State Claims

    SEATTLE — Adding to the mixed record in a string of similar Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenges to pension risk transfers (PRTs), a Washington federal judge granted dismissal of the putative class suit with leave to amend upon concluding that Weyerhaeuser Co. retirees had standing but failed to plausibly state their claims.

  • April 09, 2026

    Judge Finds Banks’ Proxy Statements Over Merger Not Misleading

    WILMINGTON, Del. — In the latest decision in a long-running case brought by shareholders regarding the merger between M&T Bank Corp. and Hudson City Bancorp Inc., a federal judge in Delaware granted summary judgment in favor of the banks and their respective directors, finding that the banks did not provide any misleading information in their joint proxy statement informing shareholders of the merger.

  • April 09, 2026

    Ore. Appeals Panel Reverses Verdict For Wildfire Class Due To Erroneous Instruction

    SALEM, Ore. — An Oregon trial court made a prejudicial error when it instructed a jury in Phase I of a bifurcated trial seeking damages from a power company accused of negligence that caused multiple Oregon wildfires in September 2020 “that it could ‘assume that the evidence at the trial applies to all class members,’” an Oregon appellate panel ruled April 8, reversing the verdicts of millions of dollars for economic and noneconomic damages.

  • April 09, 2026

    3 Universities Dismissed In Student Athletes’ Class, Collective Wage Suit

    PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed three Division I schools — Sacred Heart University, University of Notre Dame du Lac and Duke University — from a putative class and collective action lawsuit by former student athletes who allege they are employees who are owed wages by their respective schools and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

  • April 08, 2026

    Judge: Allegedly Misleading Statements In Stock Drop Suit Unactionable

    PITTSBURGH — A federal judge in Pennsylvania adopted a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation that the judge grant in part and deny in part a motion to dismiss investors’ securities fraud case against DICK’s Sporting Goods and certain of its executives regarding allegedly false and misleading statements about the state of its inventory, finding that most of the statements are unactionable.

  • April 08, 2026

    Trustees Win Summary Judgment In Multiemployer Health Plan Class Action

    CHICAGO — Saying in part that “even after ample discovery, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that Defendants’ administration of the Plans caused them harm,” an Illinois federal judge granted summary judgment for the trustees of a nationwide multiemployer health plan on all claims in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action over plan expenses and allocations.

  • April 08, 2026

    2nd Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of Solar Panel Manufacturer Stock Drop Suit

    NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of investors’ putative class action against a manufacturer of solar panels and its officers, directors, former shareholders and underwriters regarding alleged misstatements the company made about the impact of rising steel costs on the company’s business, finding that the investors failed to bring their securities fraud claims with the necessary specificity.

  • April 08, 2026

    9th Circuit Says Homeowners Lack Standing To Sue Anchor Maker, Affirms Sanctions

    SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a judgment on the pleadings in favor of two companies accused in a long-running putative class suit of selling homeowners defective anchors and said the case should have been dismissed for lack of standing.  The panel split in affirming $85,000 in attorney fees as sanction against the plaintiffs for filing a “baseless” complaint.

  • April 07, 2026

    ERISA Suit Over Health Plan’s Purportedly ‘Dominated’ Option Survives Dismissal

    CHICAGO — A putative class case over allegations that an employer breached its fiduciary duty by offering an option in its self-funded health plan that offers “no financial or medical benefit” compared to cheaper options and failed to inform plan participants of that fact has survived dismissal, with a Chicago federal judge ruling that the plaintiffs have standing and that their claims are plausible.