Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 388
standing based solely on their status as registered voters were made in bad faith,
vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons, and the plaintiffs admitted they had
doubts whether they could assert personal jurisdiction over State officials).
Hudgins, et al. v. Total Quality Logistics, LLC, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 151050
(N.D. Ill. June 1, 2022) (magistrate judge recommended sanctions motion be granted
where the defendant denied in discovery responses the existence of any Department of
Labor investigations relating to the core issue in the case, i.e., whether Defendant’s
employees were misclassified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the
plaintiff discovered two such investigations through a Freedom of Information Act
request to the Department; use of any investigatory material by the defendant and
assertion of the FLSA administrative defense was precluded, and the plaintiff was
awarded attorneys’ fees to be determined).
In Re Keurig Green Mt. Single-Serve Coffee Antitrust Litigation, 341 F.R.D. 474
(S.D.N.Y 2022) (granting motion for award of attorneys’ fees and costs in antitrust class
action under Rule 37 because while the defendant represented that it had substantially
completed its production of electronically stored information for the agreed ESI
custodians, it was aware that it had been unable to access at least four hard drives
containing potentially responsive data and even engaged a firm to attempt to extract it.)
Crooks, et al. v. State, 2022 La. App. LEXIS 434 (La. App. Mar. 16, 2022) (class
action plaintiffs who prevailed in a lawsuit alleging improper retention of private property
and concomitant mineral royalty payments by the State of Louisiana were granted a writ
of mandamus and awarded sanctions in the amount of $30,000 plus $3,323.25 in costs
on the ground that state appropriation of funds to satisfy the final judgment was required
under the State constitution).
Gonzales, et al. v. Charter Communications, LLC, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15401
(C.D. Cal. Jan. 26, 2022) (in a wage and hour class and collective action under the Fair
Labor Standards Act, where the plaintiffs’ counsel used the list of names and addresses
provided to them by the defendant to effectuate notice for the improper purpose of
initiating new litigation against the defendant in violation of the stipulated protective
order, the court granted sanctions in the form of dismissing the subsequently filed class
and collective action and awarding reasonable attorneys’ fees to the defendants for their
time moving for sanctions and defending the second lawsuit).
L.D., et al. v. United Behavior Health, Case No. 20-CV-2254 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 21,
2022) (the plaintiffs, a group of patients, filed a class action alleging that the defendant
underpaid out-of-network claims for mental health and substance use disorder
treatments. The plaintiffs filed a motion for sanctions, alleging that the defendant
submitted tens of thousands of evidentiary documents after the discovery deadline. The
court granted the motion, and barred the defendant from using documents, audio
records and an Excel spreadsheet listing new class member claims produced after the
discovery deadline date).
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
