California Fed. Court’s $ 4 billion TCPA text message settlement in Harman lawsuit

The plaintiff filed an unopposed motion for the final approval of the settlement of the class action Larson v. Harman-Management Corp.,, n ° 1: 16-cv-00219-DAD-SKO, 2020 US Dist. LEXIS 107938 (ED Cal. June 18, 2020). According to the court order, both parties appeared by telephone at the final approval hearing and no opponents were present (no objections were filed). Previously, the court had approved the class action settlement at the preliminary approval hearing. As no group certification issues have arisen in the meantime, the Court approved the following group: All persons and entities who have received text messages from the A&W Text Club between February 17, 2012 and the date of l ‘preliminary approval order.

The Court concluded that the notice to the group’s settlement was adequate, since 171,563 putative class members out of a total of 233,026 members (or 74%) had received notices by mail after considerable effort on the part of the group. administrator of the settlement. The settlement website that had the notice available received at least 19,000 hits. In the end, around 17,800 complaints were filed.

In determining whether the settlement was fair, the court noted that there were significant risks to the group if the case had progressed. This was demonstrated by the fact that the case had already been laboriously pleaded for four years with an important discovery. Before reaching a settlement, three motions for summary judgment were filed as well as a motion for collective certification. The defendant had strongly disputed whether he had used an ATDS and whether the case could be treated as a class action lawsuit due to issues with some members consenting to receive messages. The heavy litigation makes sense because the defendant faced a potential liability risk of several billion according to the court. The Court ordered that the indemnity of approximately $ 157 to each class member who filed claims against the $ 4,000,000 settlement fund, as well as the indemnity of $ 1,000,000 to the class counsel were within the limits. limits of TCPA regulations, and therefore granted final approval.