Last week the Eleventh Circuit delivered a surprising blow to class action settlement practice finding that 19th century Supreme Court precedent “prohibit[s] the type of incentive award that the district court approved here–one that compensates a class representative for his time and rewards him for bringing a lawsuit,” a type of incentive award that is “commonplace in modern class-action litigation.”
Continue Reading Eleventh Circuit Relies on 19th Century Precedent to Find That Class Representative Cannot Recover Commonly-Used Incentive Award

On May 6, 2020, the United States Supreme Court held oral argument in William P. Barr, et al. v. American Association of Political Consultants, et al., No. 19-631 (Nov. 14, 2019).
Continue Reading Have We Seen the End of the TCPA? Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument Regarding the Constitutionality of the TCPA

On February 19, 2020, the Seventh Circuit, aligning with previous decisions of the Eleventh and Third Circuits, held in Gadelhak v. AT&T Services, Inc. that a defendant’s dialing system did not constitute an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act where it was not capable of generating random and sequential numbers.
Continue Reading The Good News Keeps On Coming: Seventh Circuit Holds ATDS Must Be Able to Generate Numbers Randomly and Sequentially

Since previous FCC interpretations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) were invalidated by the DC Circuit in 2018, the definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” (“ATDS”), has been hotly contested.
Continue Reading Relief From the TCPA May Be on the Horizon: Eleventh Circuit Rejects Marks and Furthers Circuit Split