Opinion ID: 1357701
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Challenges to the Plaintiffs' Standing

Text: Unlike the Zurich Settlement, Van Enterprises did object in writing to the Gallagher Settlement on the basis of the named plaintiffs' lack of standing, and therefore these arguments were considered by the District Court. The District Court found that [t]he named Plaintiffs here have sufficiently alleged injury in factartificially inflated insurance premiumsas a result of the Gallagher Defendants' participation in the alleged customer allocation scheme and other alleged conduct, and that, as a result, unnamed Plaintiffs in the class need not make a separate showing of injury in fact, and standing is not an obstacle to certification for the class for settlement purposes. Id. at . Van Enterprises contends that the named plaintiffs do not allege and have not shown that any of their policies were subject to the improper use of contingent commission agreements and that [n]one of the named plaintiffs claim that the receipt of contingent commissions caused any broker to steer them to a policy that cost more than it should have. Van Enterprises argues that, at best, the plaintiffs assert that they have standing because the Insurer Defendants `passed through' their payments of contingent commission to all of their insureds, regardless of the geographic area or the line of commercial insurance and that this amounts to a non-particularized and conjectural allegation of injury. The defendants respond that Van Enterprises' arguments are unavailing because three different named class members purchased insurance coverage through Gallagher that included policies issued by Defendant Insurers who had entered into contingent commission agreements with Gallagher, and these named plaintiffs were individually harmed by the existence of undisclosed contingent commissions. The plaintiffs add that because the Settlement Class is limited to those policyholders with a `direct and immediate relationship' to a Broker Defendant co-conspirator in this Action, and because all Settlement Class Members purchased insurance at prices elevated by Defendants' unlawful scheme, all members of the Settlement Class have standing and have been injured by the anticompetitive conduct described in the Complaints. The plaintiffs also contend that they have suffered immediate concrete economic harman out-of-pocket costat the point they purchased their insurance policies through the Broker Defendants. Because the plaintiffs alleged that several of the named plaintiffs utilized the Gallagher Defendants' brokerage services in order to obtain insurance and that the plaintiffs suffered economic harm in the form of higher premiums as a result of the defendants' anticompetitive conduct, the named plaintiffs have standing for purposes of the class certification. The allegations demonstrate that the named plaintiffs suffered an injury in fact that is concrete and particularized and which was proximately caused by the actions of the Gallagher Defendants, and this is sufficient to establish their standing. We do not need to assess the merits of the plaintiffs' argument that, having purchased insurance at higher prices, all of the class members have standing, because the critical question is whether the named plaintiffs who were actually before the District Court had standing irrespective of whether each absent class member could establish standing. The named plaintiffs only needed to allege that they suffered an injury in fact and were not required to prove the merits of their case against the Gallagher Defendants to establish standing. Accordingly, we conclude that the District Court correctly determined that the named plaintiffs had standing and that the case could proceed.