Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 261
reasoned that the plaintiff’s asset was based on rates set by foreign entities in foreign
countries. Further, the Second Circuit opined that the alleged manipulative conduct
occurred almost entirely abroad. Therefore, the Second Circuit found that the district
court did not err in finding that the claims were impermissibly extraterritorial. The
Second Circuit also affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff’s antitrust claim. It ruled that
plaintiff failed to allege that his injury was proximately caused by the defendants.
Accordingly, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling granting the
defendants’ motion to dismiss.
The concept of judicial efficiency is always a key consideration in venue battles. In
2022, the court this concept in detail in Albright, et al. v. Terraform Labs, Ltd., 2022 U.S.
Dist. LEXIS 209074 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 17, 2022). In Albright, the court held that a motion to
transfer venue would not be granted when it would not promote judicial efficiency. The
plaintiffs filed a class action alleging that the defendants violated the Securities Act and
the Securities Exchange Act in connection with its stablecoin blockchain. The
defendants filed a motion to transfer venue to the U.S. District Court for the Northern
District of California for consolidation with Patterson, et al. v. Terraform Labs, Ltd., Case
No. 22-CV-3600 (N.D. Cal.). The court denied the motion. The defendants argued that
pursuant to the first-filed rule, the current action should be consolidated with the
Patterson case because it was filed two months before the instant action and as the
parties were nearly identical. The court agreed that Patterson was filed first, but found
that the claims in the two matters were significantly different such that consolidation
would not be appropriate. The court further noted that transferring the plaintiffs’ case
would be improper even if the first-filed principle applied because “the presumption of
transfer under the first-filed principle is just that – a presumption – and can be ‘rebutted
by proof of the desirability of proceeding in the forum of the second filed action.’” Id. at
*8-9. The court ruled that whether transfer would further judicial efficiency and the
interests of justice weighted heavily against transfer. The court opined that a transfer of
venue would delay the prompt resolution of the matter, and could possible dissuade
future class action plaintiffs from bringing claims. For these reasons, the court denied
the motion to transfer venue.
C.
JPML Issues
The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) issued numerous important opinions
this year. Given the size of consolidated class actions before the JPML, the rulings had
wide-ranging impact on class action litigation. These rulings addressed venue,
centralization of the litigation, and consolidation.
In Dale, et al. v. Deutsche Telekom AG, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184045 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 7,
2022), the plaintiffs, a group of cellular network subscribers, filed an antitrust class
action alleging that the merger of defendants T-Mobile, its owner Deutsche Telekom
AG, and SoftBank Group Corp. led to declining competition and higher prices for
wireless plans. The defendants filed a motion to transfer the action to the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York, and the court denied the motion. The court
found that the defendants failed to establish that Illinois was a less convenient forum.
Defendants contended that New York would be more convenient than Illinois because
260
© Duane Morris LLP 2023
Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
