Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 267
In Wren, et al. v. Transamerica Life Insurance Co., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 205497 (C.D.
Cal. Nov. 9, 2022), the court considered standing in a settlement bar context. The
plaintiff, a life insurance policyholder, filed a class action alleging breach of contract and
bad faith in connection with an end to policy payments related to a 22-year-old
settlement. The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, and the court granted
the motion. The plaintiff contended that the defendant induced class members to
purchase policies by using deceptive marketing materials which assumed erroneous
persistency bonus rates for the 20th, 30th and 40th years of the policy. The parties
ultimately reached an agreement in 2000. Plaintiff thereafter filed the instant action
alleging that the settlement benefits, which only included payments to him for the 10
and 20-year policy anniversaries, should be extended to the 30 and 40-year
anniversaries. The court determined that because plaintiff elected relief and received
benefits under the underlying settlement, that plaintiffs’ claims were barred by the plain
meaning of the settlement release.
Finally, in Zellmer, et al. v. Facebook, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 206475 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 14,
2022), the court held that a mere violation of a statue without any personal or individual
injury was not enough to constitute standing as a class representative. The plaintiff in
Zellmer, an application user, filed a class action alleging that the defendant failed to
provide a publically available biometric data retention policy in violation of the Illinois
Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The defendant filed a motion to dismiss for
lack of standing pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1). The court granted the motion. It ruled that
the plaintiff, a California resident, lacked standing to pursue his claim because he failed
to allege how the BIPA violation affected him. The court thus held that the plaintiff’s
claim was only a bare violation of the statute, and did not establish any personal or
individual injury. The court determined that the plaintiff’s vague allegations were
insufficient to allege a concrete and particularized harm he suffered. For these reasons,
the court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss.
E.
Uninjured Class Members Issues
In 2022, the Ninth and Sixth Circuits issued significant decisions applying the Rule 23
class certification requirements in the context of allegedly uninjured class members. The
opinions provide guidance that limit the scope of potential class definitions of classes
that may be certified.
The Ninth Circuit issued an important en banc opinion on this issue in Olean Wholesale
Grocery Cooperative, Inc., et al. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC, 31 F.4th 651 (9th Cir.
2022). The case involved three classes of tuna purchasers who alleged that tuna
suppliers engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy in violation of federal and state antitrust
laws. In certifying the classes, the district court relied on the analysis of the plaintiffs’
expert’s that purported to show that the alleged conspiracy resulted in substantial price
impacts that injured purchasers on a class-wide basis. While the Ninth Circuit ultimately
affirmed the granting of class certification in Olean, and rejected a per se ruling against
certifying a class that contains more than a de minimis number of uninjured class
members, it outlined a framework for class certification that creates significant hurdles
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
