The Supreme Court today granted certiorari in a number of cases considering whether Title VII prohibits discrimination against LGBT employees, including a case decided by the Eleventh Circuit, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 723 F. App’x 964 (May 10, 2018). In Bostock, a panel of Judges Tjoflat, Wilson, and Newsom affirmed, in an unpublished per…
Author: Wendy Spiro
Class-Action Plaintiff Lacks Standing to Challenge Policy Interpretation After Exhaustion of Personal Insurance Benefits
Citing a lack of standing, the Eleventh Circuit threw out an insurance class action that had been pending for several years in A&M Gerber Chiropractic LLC v. GEICO General Insurance Co., 2019 WL 1746869 (11th Cir. Apr. 19, 2019), leaving unsettled an “important issue” related to personal-injury-protection (PIP) benefits under Florida’s Motor Vehicle No-Fault Law….
Rule 23(f) Petitions to Eleventh Circuit
One question that Eleventh Circuit litigants often ask is how likely the court is to grant a Rule 23(f) petition for interlocutory review of a class certification decision. Litigants who have been on the wrong end of a class certification decision ask this question with particular urgency because an interlocutory appeal—before the trial on the…
Offer to “Resolve” Time-Barred Debt States Fair Debt Collection Claim
The Eleventh Circuit took on a circuit-splitting issue under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in Holzman v. Malcolm S. Gerald & Associates, 2019 WL 1495642 (11th Cir. Apr. 5, 2019). The case arose from the defendants’ efforts to collect a time-barred debt. The plaintiff alleged that the collection letter he received was “false, deceptive,…
Loan Servicer’s “Obvious” Willful Violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act Warrants Revival of Plaintiffs’ Claims for Emotional-Distress and Punitive Damages
Last week, in Marchisio v. Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC, 2019 WL 1320522 (11th Cir. Mar. 25, 2019), the Eleventh Circuit, taking a somewhat exasperated tone, addressed claims against a mortgage servicer whose repeated misreporting of a consumer account—even after a history of litigation and two settlement agreements—was an “obvious” violation of the Fair Credit Reporting…
Full Eleventh Circuit Dismisses Car Shop Antitrust Claims against Insurers
In Quality Auto Painting Center of Roselle, Inc. v. State Farm Indemnity Co., 2019 WL 1006973, on March 4, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, addressed the sufficiency of five complaints brought under the Sherman Act for price-fixing and group boycotting and state law claims for unjust enrichment, quantum meruit, and tortious interference. The…
Supreme Court Clarifies Law on Late-Filed Rule 23(f) Petitions
This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14-day deadline to file an interlocutory appeal of a district court’s class certification decision is not subject to equitable tolling. Nutraceutical Corp. v. Lambert, No. 17-1094, 2019 WL 920828 (U.S. Feb. 26, 2019). In Nutraceutical, after the district court issued a decision decertifying the class, the plaintiff…
A Takings Claim By Any Other Name . . . May Not Succeed
In Hillcrest Property, LLP v. Pasco County, 2019 WL 580259 (11th Cir. Feb. 13, 2019), the Eleventh Circuit confirmed that allegedly unlawful application of a land-use ordinance does not give rise to a substantive due process claim. As the court previously held in McKinney v. Pate, 20 F.3d 1550 (11th Cir. 1994), “executive action never…
Eleventh Circuit Holds That An Already-Married Couple Can Form An “Association-In-Fact” Enterprise Under The Civil RICO Statute Without Creating A New Entity
This week, in Al-Rayes v. Willingham, 2019 WL 441325 (11th Cir. Feb. 5, 2019) the Eleventh Circuit held that a married couple cannot escape civil liability under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act solely on the basis that their marriage preceded the illegal acts and they did not form a formal entity in executing…
Supreme Court to Rule on Securities Exchange Act Split Involving Eleventh Circuit
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian, No. 18-459, 2019 WL 98542 (U.S. Jan. 4, 2019), in order to address a circuit split over Section 14(e) of the Securities Exchange Act, 15 U.S.C. § 78n(e), which addresses misstatements and omissions regarding tender offers. Courts of Appeals disagree over whether the…