The Eleventh Circuit aligned itself last week with the majority of circuits in holding that a threshold determination that identifying class members is administratively feasible is not a separate requirement for class certification. The ruling, in the closely-watched case of Cherry v. Dometic Corp., 2021 WL 346121 (11th Cir. Feb. 2, 2021), which attracted numerous…
Court Rejects Challenges to SEC Subpoenas
The Eleventh Circuit rejected jurisdictional and relevance challenges to SEC subpoenas in SEC v. Marin, 982 F.3d 1341 (11th Cir. 2020). The SEC issued subpoenas to Carla Marin and MinTrade Technologies pursuant to a formal order of investigation (“FOI”) authorizing the Commission to investigate whether a Tampa-based limited liability company called Traders Café, and its…
Court Upholds (Again) $20 Million Punitive-Damages Verdict Against Phillip Morris
In what may be one of the last Engle progeny cases to reach the Eleventh Circuit, the court again upheld an award of punitive damages against the tobacco company defendant, rejecting Phillip Morris’s argument that the award—which was over 3 times the amount of compensatory damages awarded to the individual plaintiff—was unconstitutionally excessive in violation…
No Heightened Duty Owed to Class Representatives by Class Counsel
Counsel for a proposed class do not owe the named class representatives a heightened fiduciary duty relative to other class members. So held the Eleventh Circuit in Medical & Chiropractic Clinic, Inc. v. Oppenheim, 981 F.3d 983 (11th Cir. 2020), a decision which marked the court’s return to an unseemly controversy stemming from litigation against…
End of Engle Cigarette Litigation in Eleventh Circuit?
Judge Kevin Newsom begins his opinion for the court in Harris v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 2020 WL 6816965 (11th Cir. Nov. 20, 2020), with the auspicious observation that this Engle case is “one of the last that we’re likely to see.” Correct or not, the comment evokes the long history in the Eleventh Circuit…
Summary Judgment for Defendants Affirmed in Securities Fraud Case
In Whitehead v. BBVA Compass Bank, 2020 WL 6536897 (11th Cir. Nov. 6, 2020), the Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of the defendant bank and bank officer on the plaintiff’s claims for securities fraud. The plaintiff, an investor, claimed that the defendants wrongfully failed to inform him of the risks involved in acquiring…
Eleventh Circuit Bans Incentive Payments to Lead Plaintiffs in Class Actions
In what appears to be a first, the Eleventh Circuit recently held that federal law prohibits so-called “incentive payments” to class representatives, even as part of an agreed settlement. The court acknowledged that it was forging a new path in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, 975 F.3d 1244, 1248–49 (11th Cir. 2020)—identifying errors that it…
Divided En Banc Court Dismisses FACTA Claims for Lack of Article III Standing
In Muransky v. Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., 2020 WL 6305084 (11th Cir. Oct. 28, 2020), a divided en banc court vacated the district court’s order approving a class-action settlement and directed that the case be dismissed because the plaintiff lacked standing sufficient to establish subject-matter jurisdiction. Muransky filed a putative class action against Godiva, alleging that…
Conservation Easements with a Limited Reservation of Development Rights Are Potentially Deductible
In Pine Mountain Preserve LLLP v. Commissioner, 2020 WL 6193897 (11th Cir. Oct. 22, 2020), the Eleventh Circuit was asked whether a grantor’s reservation of limited development rights prevents a conservation easement from satisfying the requirements to claim a charitable deduction under the qualified conservation contribution rules of section 170(h) of the Internal Revenue Code….
A Sticky Situation: Epoxy Company Is Stuck With Evidence of Intent to Copy, and Evidence of Actual Confusion
The interplay between circumstantial evidence under the Lanham Act’s substantive law of trade dress infringement and the rules for summary judgment was at issue in J-B Weld Co. v. Gorilla Glue Co., 2020 WL 6144561 (11th Cir. Oct. 20, 2020). In J-B Weld,all three judges agreed that the district court erred in entering summary judgment…