Mealey's Class Actions

  • July 13, 2026

    DOL, Other Amici To U.S. High Court: Affirm ERISA Meaningful Benchmarks Ruling

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Filing amicus curiae briefs in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and other entities urge the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that a putative class suit challenging purportedly underperforming retirement plan investments in hedge funds and private equity was correctly dismissed for failure to allege a “meaningful benchmark.”

  • July 13, 2026

    Meta, Others Urge High Court To Maintain Narrow VPPA Consumer Definition

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Meta Platforms Inc. and other organizations filed 11 amicus curiae briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling that a California man who subscribed only to a free 247Sports newsletter is not a “‘consumer’” under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), with the amici collectively arguing that his reading would broaden the statute beyond video rental and audiovisual subscription transactions and expose internet, advertising and nonvideo businesses to broader VPPA liability.

  • July 13, 2026

    Medical Provider’s $2.5M Data Breach Settlement Given Final Approval

    VANCOUVER, Wash. — A Washington state judge granted final approval of a $2.5 million nonreversionary class settlement and $2,000 service awards for each of nine named plaintiffs in a suit alleging that an orthopedics and neurosurgery group failed to safeguard private information accessed during a February 2024 cyberattack.

  • July 13, 2026

    Fiduciaries Seek Dismissal Of ERISA Investment, Reinsurance Risk Case

    DALLAS — Retirement plan fiduciaries moved to dismiss with prejudice a second amended class action complaint filed under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)by retirement plan participants challenging the plan’s former investment in a Prudential Guaranteed Income Fund and alleged recordkeeping fees, arguing that the participants still lack meaningful stable value fund comparators and rely on rejected financial condition allegations.

  • July 13, 2026

    Inspector: DOL’s Common Interest Agreement Practices Were Insufficient

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following an audit prompted by allegations involving Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action litigation, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released a public report finding that the agency “did not establish sufficient controls for how it shared confidential information using common interest agreements with non-governmental entities.”

  • July 10, 2026

    Plaintiffs Value Proposed Deal In Mortality Tables Suit At More Than $149 Million

    SAN FRANCISCO — An Employee Retirement Income Security Act case challenging the use of allegedly outdated assumptions to calculate annuities for married pension plan participants would be resolved in a settlement that the named plaintiffs say would provide “more than $149 million in combined monetary and prospective relief to” members of a proposed settlement class and subclasses that together would consist of nearly 170,000 individuals; in the preliminary approval motion filed in a California federal court on July 9, the named plaintiffs further say that up to $35 million for attorney fees and costs “would not reduce the monetary benefits to the Class.”

  • July 10, 2026

    Judge Mostly Upholds Verdict Against Musk In Stock-Price Manipulation Case

    SAN FRANCISCO — In an order on posttrial motions, a federal judge in California mostly upheld a jury’s verdict against Elon Musk in a class action brought by investors in the company formerly known as Twitter who say that Musk attempted to manipulate the company’s stock price before his takeover, granting his motion for judgment as a matter of law only as to his May 17, 2022, tweet because the investors failed to provide substantial evidence to support a finding of loss causation with respect to that tweet.

  • July 10, 2026

    Judge: Investor Failed To Identify Omission In Company’s Registration Statement

    BOSTON — A federal judge in Massachusetts dismissed an investor’s putative securities class action against a biotechnology company, certain officers and directors, as well as the underwriters of its initial public offering (IPO) for allegedly omitting information from the company’s registration statement in violation of federal securities laws, finding that the investor did not plausibly identify an unlawful omission.

  • July 09, 2026

    Ill. Orthopedic Group Settles Data Breach Consolidated Class Action For $4 Million

    CHICAGO — An Illinois orthopedic group with more than 100 locations will pay $4 million to end a consolidated class action by patients who alleged that their health information was potentially compromised in a data incident discovered by Illinois Bone and Joint Institute LLC (IBJI) in July 2024, according to an Illinois judge’s opinion granting final settlement approval.

  • July 09, 2026

    Apple Accused Of Falsely Advertising Safari’s Privacy In Putative Class Suit

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — A user of Apple Inc.’s proprietary web browser, Safari, filed a putative class action lawsuit in California federal court accusing Apple of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws by deceptively advertising the browser as “a private, secure web browser that does not disclose individuals’ personal information” when it allegedly allows third-party tracking of users’ data.

  • 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.