Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 32
Trend # 8 – Courts Continued To Grapple With Problems Of Standing
And Uninjured Class Members
During 2022, courts continued to grapple with the rules that govern the certification of
classes that contain uninjured class members. Various cases climbed to the federal
circuit level, with varying results, and the U.S. Supreme Court once again declined to
take up the issue, making uninjured class members a continued topic of disagreement
and debate for 2023.
By definition, individuals who did not suffer injury as the result of the defendant’s
conduct cannot maintain claims, and courts do not have the power to award them relief.
As the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated in its seminal 2020 decision in TransUnion,
“Article III does not give federal courts the power to order relief to any uninjured plaintiff,
class action or not.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, et al., 141 S.Ct. 2190, 2208 (quoting
Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, et al., 577 U.S. 442, 466 (2016) (Roberts, C.J.,
concurring)). In this respect, the “plaintiffs must maintain their personal interest in the
dispute at all stages of the litigation . . . And standing is not dispensed in gross; rather,
plaintiffs must demonstrate standing for each claim that they press and for each form of
relief that they seek.” Id.
Courts, however, continue to grapple with the application of these concepts in the class
certification context and, in particular, they disagree over whether to certify a class, a
plaintiff must demonstrate that every putative class member has standing or, stated
differently, must demonstrate that the class excludes those individuals who did not
suffer harm. In TransUnion, the Supreme Court expressly left open the question of
“whether every class member must demonstrate standing before a court certifies a
class.” Id. at n.4. Such a requirement has significant consequences for the class action
landscape and, as a result, multiple federal circuits considered the issue over the past
year.
In Drazen, et al. v. Pinto, 41 F.4th 1354 (11th Cir. 2022), for example, the Eleventh
Circuit vacated and remanded an order approving a class settlement after finding that
some settlement class members did not experience an Article III injury. The plaintiffs
filed suit alleging that the defendant violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by
sending unwanted calls and text messages. Although the Eleventh Circuit previously
held that a single unauthorized text message is not sufficient for an Article III injury, the
district court approved the settlement on the basis that “only the named plaintiffs must
have standing.” Id. at 1357. Although only about 7% of the settlement class members
had received a single text, the Eleventh Circuit reversed. Applying TransUnion, it
explained that, when plaintiffs seek certification, they must limit the class definition “to
those individuals who have Article III standing.” Id. at 1361. Because the settlement
class may have included individuals who received a single unwanted text message, the
Eleventh Circuit held that approving the settlement would allow “individuals without
standing [to] receiv[e] what is effectively damages in violation of TransUnion.” Id. at
1362. The Eleventh Circuit remanded to provide the parties an opportunity to revise the
class definition.
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© Duane Morris LLP 2023
Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023