Consumer Fraud Class Action Review – 2025

Allstate argued that the class was too broadly defined because it could have encompassed uninjured members. The Ninth Circuit was equally unpersuaded by this argument because, it reasoned, “even a well-defined class may inevitably contain some individuals who have suffered no harm as a result of a defendant’s unlawful conduct.” Id. at *3 Finally, Allstate argued that the district court’s determinations as to Rule 23 typicality, predominance, and superiority were all erroneous. Reviewing the underlying order for abuse of discretion, the Ninth Circuit held that the district court’s decisions were not illogical, implausible, or unsupported by the record. Id. at *3-4. During its review of the district court’s predominance and superiority analysis, the Ninth Circuit stated that a denial of class certification “based on manageability concerns [relating to] the need to individually calculate damages” would be improper on superiority grounds. Id. at *4. Accordingly, the Ninth Circuit rejected Allstate’s argument that the class failed to meet the predominance and superiority requirements. For these reasons, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order granting certification of the plaintiff’s proposed class. 2. Motions For Class Certification Denied In 2024, numerous courts declined to certify putative classes of consumers who contended they were defrauded by the products or practices of various businesses. While the reasons for the courts’ denials varied, a few bases were frequently cited to included lack of standing to bring suit seeking equitable relief for failure to establish an injury-in-fact; failure to establish predominance as required by Rule 23; and a failure to demonstrate that damages could be calculated on a class-wide basis such that proceeding as a class action was the superior mode of litigation over many individual suits for less value. The court denied class certification in Hall-Landers, et al. v. New York University , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 221502 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 6, 2024). The plaintiffs filed a class action seeking a tuition refund because of the transition by the defendant, New York University (NYU), from in-person to remote learning during the Spring 2020 semester during the COVID-19 pandemic. The plaintiff filed a motion for class certification, and the court denied the motion. The plaintiff was enrolled in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in dance, specifically for the on-campus experience that included access to in-person classes, physical therapy services, and studio work. However, due to the pandemic, NYU moved to fully remote instruction in March 2020, and thus the plaintiff and other students lost access to in-person resources. The plaintiff paid approximately $27,964 in tuition for the Spring 2020 semester, with additional fees for housing, insurance, and services that were tied to the on-campus experience. The plaintiff asserted that she and other potential class members would not have paid such a high fee had they known the courses would be delivered remotely, and that their dance training was severely impacted, as remote learning could not replicate the in-person experience. In response, NYU refunded students for room and board, as well as some fees tied to in-person services, but did not offer a general tuition refund. Instead, students were asked to request refunds for tuition on an individual basis, which the plaintiff did not do. The plaintiff sought to represent a class consisting of all undergraduate students at NYU during the Spring 2020 semester who paid tuition and fees for in-person services and experiences that were not provided after the shift to online learning. The court ruled that the plaintiff’s class failed to meet the predominance and superiority requirements of Rule 23(b). The court determined that the plaintiff could not establish that common issues of law or fact predominated over individual issues, as the court would be required to make individualized determinations in the analysis of each student’s contract, injury, and damages, which would undermine class-wide treatment of the claims. The court opined that for each student, it would need to review the student’s particular program or courses in which they were enrolled, the marketing materials they relied on, and whether in-person education was promised for their specific situation. The court also reasoned that there was no uniform contract and that the terms of any implied contract could not be applied across the class as a whole. Moreover, the court found that because NYU continued to provide education, albeit remotely, determining whether a breach occurred would require individual examinations of each student’s course of study and how the switch to remote learning impacted them. Accordingly, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. In Hamm, et al. v. Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112880 (N.D. Cal. June 26, 2024), the plaintiffs filed a consumer class action alleging that the defendant, Mercedes-Benz, concealed defects in its vehicles’ transmission systems in violation of the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA). The defendant moved to dismiss the action and moved for summary judgment, while the plaintiffs moved for class certification. The court granted, in part, the defendant’s motion to dismiss and motion for summary judgment, and the court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in its entirety. In its motion to dismiss, the

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