Consumer Fraud Class Action Review – 2025

including the type of medical care received by each class member, the reason for the care, the effect of the billing scheme on the class members’ bills, and what information they each possessed about what they might be charged. The court also opined that common questions did not predominate over individual issues, particularly regarding awareness of the medical center’s billing practices and the class members’ reliance on the allegedly deceptive billing statements. Accordingly, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. Heirs to their father’s estate who inherited their father’s home subject to a deed of trust in Taie, et al. v. Ten Bridges LLC, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24464 (W.D. Wash. Feb. 12, 2024), filed a class action alleging unjust enrichment. After a foreclosure action was filed against the estate, surplus foreclosure proceeds remained, which the defendant sought to obtain by contracting with the heirs to sell their rights for a fraction of the proceeds’ value. The court denied the defendant’s initial motion to disburse the funds due to lack of notice to the heirs. Subsequently, the defendant filed another motion to disburse the funds after it provided notice to the heirs, and the court granted that motion. Thereafter, the plaintiffs filed a class action against the defendant and its principal, alleging various claims including consumer fraud and unjust enrichment. The plaintiff filed a motion for class certification pursuant to Rule 23, and the court denied the motion. During its analysis of the plaintiffs’ Rule 23 motion, the court stated that common questions rarely predominate in unjust enrichment actions, so courts often refuse to certify classes bringing such claims. The court also reasoned that although the scheme operated by the defendant produced a common inequity insofar as the business practices were the same, the trier of fact still needed to consider how and to what extent an injustice occurred, which would necessarily have required individual assessments into each claim. The court concluded that in a case asserting claims of unjust enrichment, individualized inquiries into inequitable circumstances would be necessary, and accordingly, class certification would not be appropriate. Therefore, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. In Fox, et al. v. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., LLC, 345 F.R.D. 358 (S.D. Fla. 2024), the plaintiff filed a class action lawsuit against the defendant alleging violations of The Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA). The plaintiff asserted that the defendant’s restaurants throughout the state of Florida either provided no-notice or inadequate notice that it was automatically adding an 18% gratuity charge to each customer’s bill. The plaintiff filed a motion for class certification pursuant to Rule 23, and the court denied the motion. The plaintiff sought to certify two classes, including: (i) a no-notice class consisting of all persons who dined at a restaurant in Florida owned by the defendant and received menus that provided no notice that an automatic gratuity or service charge would be added to their check, but nonetheless received a check with automatic gratuity included and paid the check; and (ii) an inadequate notice class consisting of all persons who dined at a restaurant in Florida owned by the defendant who received a menu that provided inadequate notice that an automatic gratuity or service charge would be added to the check, received a check with automatic gratuity included, and paid the check in full. Id. at 363. The court found that the plaintiff was not adequate to represent the interests of the proposed class members because his counsel had filed many other similar suits against other hotel chains, and subsequently dropped the claims. The court reasoned that abandoning the claims showed “the appearance of having divided loyalties or acting without the best interests of the class in mind,” and therefore established a conflict of interest such that the adequacy requirement was not met. Id. at 367. The court explained that it dismissed three similar cases on the same day, which was one day after the plaintiff first moved for class certification in the instant action. Therefore, the court determined that class counsel was not acting in the best interest of the class. Additionally, the court determined that the proposed class failed to meet the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b) because distinct circumstances in each defendant-property made it impossible to pursue the claims the plaintiff sought because those claims would require distinct, case-specific inquiries into the facts surrounding each allegation in each specific restaurant location. The court stated that it would need to consider not only whether each location’s menus and receipts provided inadequate notice of the gratuity, but also whether notice on the menus and the receipts in the context of the restaurant’s other practices and any other method in which the restaurant provided notice, would be sufficient. Only after considering these factors would a jury be able to determine whether a specific restaurant’s practice of providing notice would deceive a consumer acting reasonably in the same circumstances. For these reasons, the court concluded that common issues did not predominate and therefore it denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification. 3. Rulings On Decertification Issues In Consumer Fraud Class Actions Courts in the class action context have the authority to revisit certification orders and decertify a class in appropriate circumstances. More often than not, such rulings are appealed.

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