Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 389
B.
Decisions Denying Sanctions
Jennings, et al. v. Wolf, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199954 (M.D. Penn. Nov. 2, 2022)
(denying request for exclusion of evidence in the form of an expert report in a class
action on behalf of adults with profound intellectual disabilities alleging violation of their
civil rights by the State of Pennsylvania; expert was not disclosed and his the report was
released one day after the deadline, but the plaintiffs still had four months to prepare to
rebut his testimony, which they did, and therefore the evidence did not come as a
surprise and in addition there was no evidence of bad faith or willfulness and the
testimony was not of critical importance to the case.)
T.K., et al. v. Bytedance Technology Co., Ltd., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65322 (N.D.
Ill. Mar. 25, 2022) (denying motion for sanctions against attorney seeking fees for
representing an objector in a proposed class action settlement where he may have
provided minimal benefits to the settlement class by drawing attention to defects in the
class notice, and may have advanced the interests of class members in other ways,
even though his objections ultimately failed).
Holland-Hewitt, et al. v. Allstate Life Insurance Co., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200074
(E.D. Cal. Nov. 2, 2022) (declining to award sanctions or attorneys’ fees under Rule
37(b) where the parties’ discovery dispute centered on whether the plaintiffs were
entitled to compel production of a list of all putative class members’ names and contact
information pre-certification because, although the defendant was ultimately compelled
to produce such a list, it did cite relevant case law in support of its position that it was
not required to do so).
Daniels, et al. v. Government Employees Insurance Co., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
8590 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 18, 2022) (magistrate judge recommended denial of motion for
sanctions under the court’s inherent authority and 28 U.S.C. §1927 where the defendant
in a pending class action accused the plaintiffs’ counsel of litigation misconduct and
forum shopping by filing two amended complaints and ultimately voluntarily dismissing
the lawsuit because no bad faith was shown; recommendation adopted by district
court).
Lechter, et al. v. Aprio, LLP, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 150604 (N.D. Ga. Aug. 17, 2022)
(motion for sanctions under Rule 11 or the court’s inherent authority denied where the
defendant alleged no factual basis for causes of actions alleged against it as to original
class action complaint, and the plaintiff filed an amended class action that the court later
dismissed; the court declined to apply the request for sanctions to the amended
complaint because the defendant did not file a motion for sanctions against that specific
pleading).
In Re Gold King Mine Release, In San Juan County, Colorado, On Aug. 9, 2015,
Case No. 18-MD-2824 (D. N.Mex. Oct. 19, 2022) (the plaintiffs, the Navajo Nation, the
State of New Mexico and its Environmental Department, filed a class action alleging that
the defendants’, the U.S. Government, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and
a group of federal contractors, work on a gold mine when a blowout in the mine
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
