Mealey's Class Actions

  • July 08, 2026

    Oregon Supreme Court Allows Wildfire Class To Challenge Verdict Reversal

    SALEM, Ore. — The Oregon Supreme Court will review an appellate court’s reversal of verdicts awarding millions of dollars for economic and noneconomic damages awarded in Phase I of a bifurcated trial seeking damages from a power company accused of negligence that allegedly caused multiple Oregon wildfires in September 2020; the appellate panel reversed due to a prejudicial error in the jury instructions.

  • July 07, 2026

    Judge Dismisses Claims For Equitable Relief From Class Suit Against Fitness Company

    SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge granted in part and denied in part a motion for summary judgment filed by the manufacturer of a wearable fitness tracker that is facing class claims for $28.2 million in damages allegedly caused by its automatic renewal of customers’ subscriptions and dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that were brought seeking equitable restitution or injunctive relief.

  • July 07, 2026

    More ERISA Suits Against Large Employers, Brokers Target Voluntary Insurance

    The number of Employee Retirement Income Security Act lawsuits focused on “voluntary” accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity insurance programs and filed against large employers and insurance brokers is growing, with at least three new putative class cases filed in the past few months.

  • July 07, 2026

    Judge: Lack Of Meaningful Comparators Dooms ERISA Suit Over Stable Value Fund

    MILWAUKEE — Concluding that a plaintiff who challenged the decision to keep an allegedly underperforming stable value fund (SVF) in a retirement plan failed to state his claims because the comparators he proposed were not “meaningful benchmarks,” a Wisconsin federal judge dismissed the putative class case with prejudice; among other things, the judge said that “the potential insolvency of one out of ten wrap providers is insufficient to render the Fidelty SVF an imprudent choice.”

  • July 07, 2026

    Immigration Class Settlement To End 18-Year Internal Vetting Policy

    SEATTLE — The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP), an internal vetting policy implemented in 2008, will be rescinded pursuant to a class settlement reached in a nearly decade-long case over the vetting process that was found by a federal court in Washington to have been adopted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner.

  • July 07, 2026

    Woman Files Class Action Against AbbVie Over Alleged Juvederm Warning Omissions

    CHICAGO — The manufacturer of a hyaluronic acid (HA) filler injection failed to warn consumers of the risk of developing hard masses called granulomas, “hard lumps that appear lighter or darker than the surrounding skin and can be exceedingly painful to touch,” a woman alleges in a putative class action complaint filed in an Illinois federal court.

  • July 06, 2026

    Partial Class Certification Granted In DOJ Gender-Affirming Care Records Suit

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on July 2 granted in part class certification and a motion for a preliminary injunction in a putative class action against the U.S. Department of Justice and a California children’s hospital seeking to stop the DOJ from obtaining patient records related to gender-affirming care as evidence of purported violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), finding that provisional class certification and injunction apply to a specific subclass because the plaintiffs failed to establish the commonality and typicality requirements under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for the statewide class.

  • July 06, 2026

    Wisconsin Residents File Class Suit Against Microsoft Over Data Center Noise

    MILWAUKEE — A 315-acre Mount Pleasant, Wis., data center owned and operated by Microsoft Corp. currently uses “the energy demand of a medium-sized city” and is damaging nearby properties due to its “unreasonable” noise, three Sturtevant, Wis., residents allege in a class complaint filed in a federal court in their state.

  • July 06, 2026

    $47.75M Class Deal Wins Preliminary OK In Execs’ Suit Over Top Hat Plans

    ATLANTA — A Georgia federal judge on July 2 granted preliminary approval to a $47.75 million deal that would resolve a long-running suit over lump-sum payments from terminated “top hat” plans that provided life annuities for NCR Corp. executives; the executives said that under the deal, the average gross settlement for 189 members of an opt-out settlement class would exceed $252,000.

  • July 06, 2026

    D.C. Circuit Grants En Banc Rehearing In Deportation Class Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted rehearing en banc and vacated an April divided panel opinion that granted a writ of mandamus sought by federal government parties in a class case over the deportation of Venezuelan men and directed the trial court, which had issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) barring the removal of any of the men, to terminate criminal contempt proceedings related to the transfer of the men to a megaprison in El Salvador referred to as CECOT.

  • July 02, 2026

    $9.6M Class Deal Closing ERISA Forfeiture Case Wins Final Approval

    NEW YORK — Resolving an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case squarely focused on using forfeited nonvested matching retirement funds to reduce company contributions, a New York federal judge issued two July 1 orders granting final approval of a $9.6 million class settlement and awarding attorney fees totaling $3.2 million, also granting the nine class representatives $5,000 each for case contribution awards.

  • July 01, 2026

    8th Circuit Won’t Allow Appeal Of Class Cert In ERISA Tobacco Surcharge Case

    ST. LOUIS — In a June 30 judgment issued without substantive explanation, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a petition to allow an interlocutory challenge to certification of three opt-out classes and one mandatory class in a case that is part of a wave of Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenges to health plan tobacco surcharges.

  • July 01, 2026

    Settlement Reported Before Bench Trial In ERISA Class Lawsuit Over Severance

    OAKLAND, Calif. — In a June 30 joint notice that was filed just over a week before a bench trial was scheduled to begin, parties in a long-running Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action over severance benefits told a California federal court “that they have reached agreement on all terms of their proposed class action settlement and expect to have a fully executed Memorandum of Understanding within the next few days.”

  • July 01, 2026

    FedEx’s $8.5 Million Wage Settlement For N.J. Warehouse Class Approved

    TRENTON, N.J. — A federal judge in New Jersey granted final approval of an $8.5 million settlement by FedEx Ground Package System Inc. to end a class complaint alleging the shipper violated New Jersey wage law by failing to pay hourly warehouse workers for actions they were required to undertake before and after their shifts.

  • July 01, 2026

    ICE Ordered To Release Wrongfully Detained Noncitizen Class Members, Others

    SAN DIEGO — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other defendants in a long-running immigration separation class case that dates back to President Donald J. Trump’s first term were ordered by a federal judge in California to release five class members and two qualifying additional family members (QAFMs) pursuant to a 2023 settlement agreement.

  • June 30, 2026

    4th Circuit OKs Quick Appeal On Class Cert Ruling After Trauernicht

    RICHMOND, Va. — In a June 29 order without substantive explanation, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed to allow an interlocutory appeal concerning certification of an opt-out class in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case where the initial certification of a mandatory class was vacated under the appellate court’s recent Trauernicht v. Genworth Fin. Inc. ruling.

  • June 30, 2026

    8th Circuit Affirms ERISA Preempts Arkansas Coverage Requirements

    ST. LOUIS — Affirming dismissal of a putative class unjust enrichment suit concerning allegations that a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) violated Arkansas law, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on June 29 ruled in part that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act preempts geographic coverage requirements imposed by regulations implementing the law’s network adequacy provision.

  • June 30, 2026

    U.S. Supreme Court Majority In Class Suit Upholds Birthright Citizenship

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a majority opinion that outlined the extensive history of citizenship in the United States, a divided U.S. Supreme Court on June 30 ruled that children born to parents who are “unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States . . . are citizens at birth” under the U.S. Constitution.

  • June 30, 2026

    Government Denied Stay Of Preliminary Injunction In Gender-Affirming Care Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald J. Trump and other federal government parties preliminarily enjoined from enforcing the federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) February 2026 near-total ban on gender-affirming care and ordered to reinstate the gender-affirming care provided to prisoners “immediately prior to the issuance of” a January 2025 executive order (EO) failed to show that they are entitled to a stay pending appeal, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled.

  • June 30, 2026

    Auto-Renewal Settlement Objector Asks High Court To Review Representative Payments

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A California attorney and class member who objected to the settlement of a lawsuit that accused The New York Times Co. of engaging in an illegal “automatic renewal” scheme petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking review of class representative payments.

  • June 30, 2026

    7th Circuit: CAFA Mass Action Local Event, Occurrence Exception Is Jurisdictional

    CHICAGO — The Class Action Fairness Act’s (CAFA) mass action local event or occurrence exception is jurisdictional and applies in a lawsuit over a weeklong industrial facility fire in Richmond, Ind., as “the fire is ‘an event or occurrence’ from which all claims in the action arose,” a Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, addressing a question it said was one of first impression and finding that the trial court did not err by raising the question of the mass action exception sua sponte.

  • June 29, 2026

    Consumer’s Class Suit Claiming Soda Name Causes Confusion Dismissed With Prejudice

    CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — A putative class complaint alleging that the brand “Canada Dry” misleads consumers to believe that the soda is made in Canada was dismissed without leave to amend by a federal judge in New York, who ruled that the plaintiff failed to plausibly allege that an import-related or other premium for the product exists.

  • June 29, 2026

    2 Noncitizen Classes Certified, ICE’s Courthouse Arrests And Hold Waiver Halted

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal judge in California certified two classes of noncitizens in a case brought by individuals who were arrested at a courthouse and/or detained more than 12 hours by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and vacated the ICE and Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) policies that permitted those challenged actions to occur.

  • June 26, 2026

    Judge Dismisses Class Suit Against Spotify Over Alleged Bot Streams

    LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge granted music-streaming service Spotify USA Inc.’s motion to dismiss a putative class action brought against it by a rapper who accused the company of negligence and violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) for failing to prevent artificial streaming of artists’ music, which the plaintiff said included billions of streams by bots of music by musician Drake and allegedly reduced the revenue pool open to competing musicians such as himself.

  • June 26, 2026

    7th Circuit: Plaintiff Fails To Show Insurer Is Liable For Telemarketer’s Calls

    CHICAGO — The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower federal court’s denial of a plaintiff’s request for class certification in his lawsuit seeking to hold an insurer liable under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act but reversed the court’s summary judgment ruling in favor of the plaintiff, holding that he failed to demonstrate that the insurer is vicariously liable for a telemarketer’s calls under any theory of agency law.