Source: https://www.classactiondeclassified.com/2018/03/facta-cases-continue-present-ideal-targets-spokeo-challenges-eleventh-circuit-defendants-take-particular-notice/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:46:58+00:00

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We’ve already written about Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016), in which the Supreme Court reaffirmed that all federal plaintiffs, even those alleging a statutory violation, must have suffered a real, concrete injury in order to have Article III standing. As we’ve noted in a past blog post, despite Spokeo’s clear guidance that a mere technical statutory violation, divorced from any concrete harm, is not enough to confer Article III standing, lower courts have divided on how to apply Spokeo to federal statutory class actions. Notwithstanding Spokeo’s inconsistent application in other contexts, many have been willing to use Spokeo as a basis to dismiss claims under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act or FACTA. One recent example is Kirchein v. Pet Supermarket, Inc.
A quick primer: FACTA prohibits the willful printing of more than the last five digits of a consumer’s credit card number on an electronically generated receipt provided at the point of sale. Even though there is basically no evidence suggesting that consumers’ identities are at any material risk if a FACTA violation occurs, FACTA is a severely punitive statute. Damages for each FACTA violation are between $100 and $1,000, either per customer or per receipt—courts are divided on that question—with no classwide statutory damage cap. The combination of high damages, relative ease of proving violations, and availability of class certification creates strong incentives for plaintiffs to bring FACTA claims as class actions. Plaintiffs asserting FACTA claims usually define the class to exclude consumers who have suffered any actual damages. Those consumers can recover even more individually under the statute, but proving individual damages often precludes class certification. As a result, FACTA cases commonly feature a large number of unharmed class members.
Congress’ role in identifying and elevating intangible harms does not mean that a plaintiff automatically satisfies the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right. Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation. For that reason, [the plaintiff] could not, for example, allege a bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm, and satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III.
Spokeo’s requirement of harm beyond a mere statutory violation has been very difficult for FACTA plaintiffs to overcome. As Judge Moreno of the Southern District of Florida put it, “the Seventh and Second Circuits, as well as multiple district courts, have held that under Spokeo, a plaintiff who has not suffered any actual harm or material risk of harm lacks standing to sue for violations of the Act” (see Tarr v. Burger King Corp.). A similar case, Gesten v. Burger King Corp., suffered the same fate at the hands of Judge Scola in the Southern District of Florida.
The latest case to join this line is Kirchein, a FACTA case before Judge Scola that the parties had previously preliminarily settled. The defendant discovered through the course of the settlement process that there were more class members than expected, so it moved to vacate preliminary approval of the settlement. While the court did not directly vacate approval of the settlement, it went much further and dismissed the entire case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. It noted that, even if it was possible that a FACTA violation could give rise to standing, the injury alleged by the plaintiff did not give rise to standing because the plaintiff did not even allege that his personal information had been involuntarily exposed to anyone.
These cases demonstrate that many garden-variety FACTA complaints are exactly what Spokeo forbids. Federal jurisdiction requires more than a pure procedural issue.
First, Spokeo’s injury-in-fact requirement is an issue the defendants should continue to press in every class action seeking only statutory damages, notwithstanding the existence of a few less-than-favorable decisions. The Southern District of Florida’s recent FACTA decisions should give defendants renewed hope in their ability to challenge standing because these cases reflect a growing reversal of a trend of finding standing in similar cases.Many of the early post-Spokeo FACTA cases that found jurisdiction did so by relying on pre-Spokeo cases, particularly Hammer Sam’s East, Inc. While the Eleventh Circuit, in an unpublished opinion about the FDCPA, seemed to give Spokeo a narrow reading in Church v. Accretive Health, Inc., the court later upheld dismissals on Spokeo grounds in other statutory damage cases shortly thereafter (see Meeks v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, and Nicklaw v. CitiMortgage, Inc.). Courts with FACTA claims had initially found shelter under Church to keep their cases, but time has proven that shelter far from leak proof. For its part, the Southern District of Florida has now recognized that Spokeo has often dispositive implications for FACTA class actions, and that the pre-Spokeo Hammer case is obsolete.
Second, on a related point, defendants may benefit from pressing a Spokeo challenge even if outright dismissal is unlikely. Plaintiffs can be forced into making individualized allegations about how they were personally harmed. Those allegations can then be used as a lever to upend class certification on commonality, typicality, and predominance grounds.
Third, while FACTA is particularly egregious in penalizing what looks to be harmless conduct, claims seeking statutory damages under other federal and state statutes are also vulnerable to Spokeo Alleged technical violations of notice provisions under the FDCPA can, in some instances, be pure touch fouls with no harm. Other kinds of data breach claims, such as state-law negligence or privacy claims arising from payment card hacking, are another context in which Spokeo may apply when plaintiffs allege nothing more than an increased risk of identity theft.
Fourth, watch out for removal issues. While FACTA raises a federal question and an automatic chance to remove a case, a motion under Spokeo can easily result in a remand. Burger King found this out the hard way: After Judge Scola dismissed the Gesten case, the plaintiff re-filed in state court. Burger King removed, but the district court remanded, noting that Burger King had previously successfully argued that federal jurisdiction does not exist.
Zac Madonia represents public and private companies, and their officers and directors, in all stages of class action litigation in federal and state courts all over the country. Zac has successfully opposed class certification and obtained dismissal or summary judgment of class claims involving a variety of different legal issues, such as securities fraud, antitrust, and federal and state consumer and debtor protection statutes, and industries, including financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, software, and gaming.
Will the Future Bring a Surge of Class Actions against Banks and Credit Card Companies?

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