Consumer Fraud Class Action Review – 2025

common questions of law or fact did not predominate. Accordingly, the court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The plaintiffs in Airquip Inc., et al. v. HomeAdvisor Inc., Case No. 16-CV-1849 (D. Colo. Jan. 10, 2024), a group of service professionals, filed a class action alleging that the defendant failed to deliver home repair jobs as promised. In denying the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, the court found that the plaintiffs, who had paid membership fees to the defendant to connect them with homeowners in need of services, failed to provide a sufficient analysis of how various state laws would handle their claims of unjust enrichment, fraud, and aiding and abetting fraud. This lack of analysis was fatal to their request for class certification because the plaintiffs could not legitimately argue that their claims could be handled on a common basis. The court determined that the plaintiffs failed meet the commonality and predominance requirements of Rule 23 because their proposed class claims would require individualized analysis to determine which laws applied to each claim. The court further opined that class treatment was not the superior method of adjudication because interpretations of the laws of several states would make adjudicating the case unmanageable. For these reasons, the court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. In Cabrera, et al. v. Bayer Healthcare LLC, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31709 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 23, 2024), the plaintiff, a consumer, filed a class action alleging that the defendant misrepresented its Multivitamin Supplement as being a “complete” multivitamin, marketed as containing “all the vitamins,” but the supplement lacked several essential vitamins such as Vitamins K, B1, B2, and B3. Id. at *3. The plaintiff alleged that had she known the multivitamin lacked these essential vitamins, she would not have purchased Bayer Healthcare’s Multivitamin Supplement, or she would have paid significantly less for it. The plaintiff brought claims for alleged violations of the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA), the Unfair Competition Law (UCL), the False Advertising Law (FAL), as well as other common law claims. The plaintiff moved for class certification pursuant to Rule 23 of three classes, including: (i) a nationwide class of consumers who purchased the multivitamins based on their “complete” marketing; (ii) a California sub-class; and (iii) a California consumer sub-class of residents who purchased the multivitamin for personal, family, or household purposes. Id. at *5. The court denied the motion. It found that the plaintiff failed to meet the typicality and adequacy requirements of Rule 23(a). The defendant argued that the plaintiff was not an adequate class representative because her personal circumstances and understanding of the product’s labeling differed significantly from other potential class members’ understandings of the same language. Specifically, the defendant asserted that the plaintiff did not claim she relied on the alleged misrepresentations when purchasing the products and that her understanding of key terms like “complete” differed from the average consumer. Id. at *21. The defendants further contended that these individual defenses were central to their response to the plaintiff’s claims, and thus, granting class certification with the plaintiff as the representative would force excessive attention on her unique circumstances rather than advancing the claims of other class members in an efficient manner. The court agreed that the defendants that the plaintiff did not rely on the allegedly deceptive labeling when purchasing the products, based on her deposition testimony that she had not previously considered the meaning of the term “complete” as used on the products made her an atypical class member. Id. at *22. The court also found that the plaintiff was not a typical class member because Cabrera purchased similar products after becoming aware of their contents, and this situation would disproportionately consume resources if she were the class representative. For these reasons, the court found that the plaintiff’s claims were not typical of those of a broad nationwide or California consumer sub-class. For these reasons, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. The plaintiff in York, et al. v. Saint Elizabeth Medical Center, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72654 (E.D. Ky. Apr. 22, 2024), a hospital patient, filed a class action alleging that the defendant, a medical center, engaged in fraudulent billing practices by inflating charges on bills it issued to patients. The plaintiff asserted that she received bills totaling $15,136.37 and $4,497.71 for her stay following the birth of her child in May 2021. These amounts, the plaintiff alleged, were inflated compared to the “true charges” incurred which were $8,452.03 and $2,590.37, respectively. Id. at *2. The plaintiff asserted that the defendant’s “all-inclusive billing” policy, applicable in May 2021, led to unjustified and inflated charges that were passed on to patients. Id. The plaintiff sought class certification of all current and former patients who were billed using the medical center’s alleged “all-inclusive billing” scheme. Id. at *5. Although it found numerosity had been established by the estimated size of the 18,000 members of the proposed class, the court determined the plaintiff failed to meet the typicality requirement and therefore, class certification would not be appropriate. The court reasoned that individual circumstances and the class members’ understanding of billing terms varied among potential class members,

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