InfoBytes Blog
9th Circuit affirms $142 million settlement in bank sales practices action
On July 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed (in a published and an unpublished opinion) a $142 million class action settlement between a nationwide class of consumers and a national bank, concluding the class was unified by a claim under federal law. The published opinion specifically affirmed the district court’s holding that the class satisfied the predominance requirement under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the unpublished memorandum disposition, the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court’s certification of the settlement class, approval of the settlement, award of attorneys’ fees, and approval of notice.
As previously covered by InfoBytes, the settlement covers a 2015 class action lawsuit regarding retail sales practices that involved bank employees creating deposit and credit card accounts without obtaining consent to do so. In April 2017, the bank agreed to expand the original settlement class to include claims dating back to May 2002, resulting in a settlement amount of $142 million. The district court certified the class and approved the settlement. Objectors appealed, arguing that the class did not satisfy the predominance requirement, because the court did not do a choice-of-law analysis.
On appeal, the 9th Circuit upheld the district court’s rulings on the settlement, concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding the class met the federal predominance requirements. Specifically, the appellate court held that the FCRA claim unified the class, allowing the class to “show that the FCRA’s elements were proven by a common course of conduct.” Moreover, the appellate court concluded that the “existence of potential state-law claims did not outweigh the FCRA claim’s importance.” In a separate unpublished memorandum opinion, the appellate court affirmed, among other things, the award of attorney’s fees, which were “well below the 25% benchmark.”