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Mealey's Class Actions

  • February 04, 2026

    DOJ Files Statement Of Interest In ADA ‘Violation’ Online Retailer Class Suit

    OAKLAND, Calif. — The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a statement of interest urging a California federal court to reject an amended settlement in which an online clothing retailer agreed to pay a gross settlement amount of $5.15 million in a putative class action alleging that the retailer violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and similar California law by not designing its website to be accessible to blind or visually-impaired persons.

  • February 04, 2026

    1st Circuit Upholds Luxury Hotel’s Unpaid Wages Settlement With Former Workers

    BOSTON —  A First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court’s ruling that held the owner and leadership of a luxury hotel to a global settlement deal with several individuals and a certified class of former employees who sued for unfair wages after the hotel challenged the agreement, opining that the lone attorney who represented both the individuals and the class was allowed to negotiate all of the settlements, among other findings.

  • February 03, 2026

    Interlocutory Appeal Of August Partial Dismissal Of USAID Shutdown Suit Denied

    GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge in Maryland denied federal government parties’ motion for certification of an August 2025 opinion for interlocutory appeal in a class case by former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) workers who allege that actions by Elon Musk and others in the federal government to shut down the agency violate the U.S. Constitution; the August decision partially granted a motion to dismiss as to the claims brought against President Donald J. Trump.

  • February 03, 2026

    Illinois Graduate Class Certified In BIPA Case Against Ceremony Photographer

    EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — Illinois graduates suing the company that captured photos of their ceremonies for allegedly violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by collecting their biometric identifiers to use facial recognition to identify all photos in which each graduate appears and offer them for sale may proceed as a class, a federal judge in Illinois ruled, granting a motion for class certification (Joshua Gaertner, et al. v. Commemorative Brands, Inc., et al., No. 23-2452, S.D. Ill., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20357).

  • February 03, 2026

    5th Circuit: District Court Wrong To Dismiss Stock Drop Suit With Prejudice

    NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a lower court was wrong to dismiss investors’ putative class action against a telecommunications corporation and certain of its executives for misleading investors about its failure to remedy old lead-sheathed telephone cables, finding that the lower court did not provide an analysis to support dismissing the complaint with prejudice.

  • February 03, 2026

    Third-Party Payer Class Tells High Court That Review Not Needed In Certification Spat

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that found no error in the certification of a national third-party payer (TPP) class of entities that paid for the diabetes drug Actos, despite the court recognizing that there is no way to calculate the number of class members that were not harmed, does not warrant review by the U.S. Supreme Court, Painters and Allied Trades District Council 82 Health Care Fund argues in an opposition filed Feb. 2.

  • February 03, 2026

    Judge Approves $3M Settlement Of Consumers’, Employees’ Data Breach Claims

    SEATTLE — A federal judge in Washington granted final approval to a settlement worth $3 million, including $1 million in attorney fees, in favor of a class of more than 34,000 individuals who alleged that their sensitive data was breached during a hack of a workflow solutions company and its subsidiaries in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws.

  • February 03, 2026

    23andMe Bankruptcy Judge Approves $50M Settlement; Data Breach MDL To Be Dismissed

    The parties to multidistrict litigation in California federal court against 23andMe Inc. and affiliates for a data breach in which millions of customers’ genetic data and personally identifiable information (PII) was hacked filed a joint status report on Feb. 2 stating the plaintiffs will move to dismiss the MDL following the final approval in Missouri federal bankruptcy court of a settlement worth up to $50 million to resolve U.S. customers’ claims against 23andMe, with 25% allocated for attorney fees.

  • February 03, 2026

    Public Interest Firm, Other Amici Support Trump’s View Of Birthright Citizenship

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Kirkwood Institute Inc. and two legal scholars in a Feb. 2 amicus curiae brief are the latest to support in the class case before the U.S. Supreme Court the view of birthright citizenship held by President Donald J. Trump and federal agencies on whether a January 2025 executive order (EO) that declared that children born in the United States are not citizens when their mother is “unlawfully present in the United States” or their mother’s presence is “temporary” and their father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident complies with the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

  • February 03, 2026

    Google Assistant Users Seek Approval Of $68M Settlement For Eavesdropping Claims

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge terminated a hearing date after a group of plaintiffs moved for preliminary approval of a $68 million settlement of their putative class claims against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. (collectively Google) for allegedly eavesdropping on Google Assistant (GA) users in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and privacy laws.

  • February 02, 2026

    9th Circuit: Judge Properly Found Securities Claims Against Crypto Firm Barred

    SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court’s order granting a motion from an issuer of crypto tokens and its CEO to dismiss class action securities claims against them, finding that the 2017 offering of the tokens was a separate offering from the 2013 offering, making the federal securities claims time-barred.

  • February 02, 2026

    Former DOL Officials, Other Amici Urge 4th Circuit Affirmance In PRT Case

    RICHMOND, Va. — Three amicus curiae briefs filed Jan. 30 urge the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to affirm a ruling that retirees had standing to file a putative class lawsuit that is part of a much-watched string of pension risk transfer (PRT) challenges, with one of those briefs coming from former U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) officials who argue that the Jan. 9 amicus brief the DOL filed here shows that “an effort is underway to limit the scope of” the private right of action under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

  • January 30, 2026

    6th Circuit Grants Rehearing En Banc In Class Action Suit Against Auto Insurer

    CINCINNATI — The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Jan. 29 granted a petition for rehearing en banc and vacated a panel majority’s opinion that found that an insured met the necessary requirements to certify a class and had standing to bring a class action suit that alleges that an auto insurer breached its contract and acted in bad faith in determining a vehicle’s total loss value.

  • January 29, 2026

    Government To High Court: Service Members’ Vaccine Mandate Petitions Are Moot

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 28 — two weeks after the federal government argued in two oppositions that the issue in companion cases is moot — distributed for its Feb. 20 conference two petitions by members of the U.S. Air Force and Space Force that ask the high court to consider in class cases whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) allows for their reinstatement following their refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine to include back pay and retirement points.

  • January 29, 2026

    Pension Benefits Statements Case Dismissed By Agreement Of Parties

    LOS ANGELES — A putative class pension benefit statements case on its second remand from the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals was dismissed with prejudice by a California federal judge on Jan. 28 pursuant to a joint stipulation.

  • January 29, 2026

    Judge Approves $7.5 Million Class Settlement For Case Involving Premature Birth Drug

    NEWARK, N.J. — A New Jersey federal judge granted final approval of a $7.5 million class action settlement to end claims that a drug manufacturer knew that its premature birth prevention drug was ineffective and awarded attorney fees, costs and service fee awards for the named plaintiffs.

  • January 28, 2026

    Judge OKs Subclasses As Long-Running Multiplan ERISA Suit Continues

    AUSTIN, Texas — On remand following the dispute’s second trip to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a Texas federal judge created four subclasses in the suit brought on behalf of participants in thousands of unrelated Employee Retirement Income Security Act retirement and health benefit plans.

  • January 28, 2026

    Noncitizen Subclass Granted Preliminary Injunction In Parole Termination Case

    BOSTON — A recently modified subclass of noncitizens whose family reunification parole (FRP) is slated to be terminated as part of a year’s worth of immigration policy changes that began immediately after President Donald J. Trump’s January 2025 inauguration was granted a preliminary injunction by a federal judge in Massachusetts; in April 2025, the same judge partially granted emergency relief to a larger class of noncitizens facing parole revocation, but that order was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court the following month and vacated by the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in September.

  • January 28, 2026

    Full 11th Circuit Will Consider Overruling Its ERISA Exhaustion Precedent

    ATLANTA — Agreeing to en banc rehearing concerning a 40-year-old circuit precedent that two panel members had said “imposed a judicially-created and atextual administrative exhaustion requirement for fiduciary-breach and statutory claims under” the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Jan. 27 vacated a ruling affirming dismissal of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) valuation case.

  • January 28, 2026

    Interlocutory Review Denied Following Ruling On Website Tracker As Pen Register

    SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California denied a website owner’s motion to certify for interlocutory appeal an October order declining dismissal of a putative class case alleging that the website’s third-party trackers that collect users’ data violate the California Invasion of Privacy Act’s (CIPA) pen register/trap-and-trace law, finding that “every federal court to tackle the CIPA applicability question has rejected” the website owner’s position that the pen register prohibition doesn’t apply and rejecting the defendant’s argument that the case presents a novel issue.

  • January 28, 2026

    Data-Sharing Class Claims Against Shopify Partly Dismissed By Federal Judge

    OAKLAND, Calif. — After a previous dismissal ruling was reversed and remanded by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Shopify Inc. partly succeeded in its second motion to dismiss privacy claims against it, with a California federal judge finding that some of a plaintiff’s putative class claims over the online retailer’s purported collection and sharing of customer data for the creation of individualized profiles failed for not adequately alleging an injury.

  • January 27, 2026

    9th Circuit Won’t Allow Interlocutory Appeal On Class Certification

    SAN FRANCISCO — A grant of class certification in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit over alleged underpayment for out-of-network behavioral health treatment will stand after the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Jan. 26 denied a petition for leave to file an interlocutory appeal that involves the question of whether underpayment of benefits for an ERISA plan is an injury sufficient for standing purposes.

  • January 27, 2026

    10th Circuit Affirms $17.3M Attorney Fee Award In Fracking Royalty Dispute

    DENVER — A 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Jan. 26 affirmed a lower court’s award of more than $17.3 million in attorney fees as part of a $52 million oil and gas royalty settlement on grounds that the trial court assessed the award’s reasonableness by weighing it using Oklahoma’s statutory factors and conducting a lodestar cross-check and there was no abuse of discretion.

  • January 27, 2026

    6th Circuit Vacates Injunction In Social Media Sex Offender Disclosure Dispute

    CINCINNATI — The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Jan. 26 vacated a preliminary injunction and remanded a putative class action filed against a county attorney by a Kentucky registered sex offender seeking to prevent enforcement of a Kentucky law requiring certain registered sex offenders to display their full legal name on their social media accounts, finding in part that the law at issue may cover conduct to which the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not apply.

  • January 27, 2026

    Judge Grants Dismissal Of Agency Heads In Putative Class Suit Over HHS RIF

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed as redundant agency heads named as defendants in a putative class complaint over an April 2025 reduction-in-force (RIF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that affected approximately 10,000 employees and was allegedly based on inaccurate records in violation of the Privacy Act; this case is one of several currently challenging various 2025 RIFs impacting numerous federal agencies.