Opinion ID: 2574876
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Before the amendment of their complaint individual consumers lacked interest-injury standing to sue Lithia Hyundai and Lithia Chevrolet.

Text: In Trustees for Alaska v. State, [19] we explained that [t]he basic requirement for standing in Alaska is adversity. [20] Our cases have discussed two different kinds of standing. One is interest-injury standing; the other is citizen-taxpayer standing. [21] Under the interest-injury approach, a plaintiff must have an interest adversely affected by the conduct complained of. [22] Citizen-taxpayer standing, on the other hand, arises when taxpayers or citizens wish to challenge governmental action based on their status as taxpayers or citizens. [23] Here, because the consumers are not challenging governmental action but are rather alleging private harm caused by private actors, citizen-taxpayer standing is not at issue. Thus, the consumers must have interest-injury standing in order to sue Lithia Hyundai and Lithia Chevrolet. The consumers cite Carpenter v. Hammond [24] and Adams v. Pipeliners Union 798 [25] to support their argument that they have sufficient standing to sue Lithia Hyundai and Lithia Chevrolet. The dealerships correctly point out that Carpenter involved citizen-taxpayer standing, [26] not interest-injury standing, and is therefore not controlling. However, in Adams we addressed a claim involving interest-injury standing and noted that to give standing all that is necessary is a `sufficient personal stake in the controversy to guarantee the adversity which is fundamental to judicial proceedings.' [27] Under the interest-injury standing test, therefore, the consumers must have an interest adversely affected by the actions of Lithia Hyundai and Lithia Chevrolet, [28] and they must have a sufficient personal stake in the controversy to guarantee ... adversity.... [29] According to their original complaint, the consumers had interests that were adversely affected by the actions of Lithia Chrysler and Lithia Dodge, but none of those interests were adversely affected by Lithia Hyundai or Lithia Chevrolet. The named class representative plaintiffs specifically alleged wrongdoing only by Lithia Chrysler and Lithia Dodge. Although Lithia Chevrolet is briefly mentioned in the complaint, the named class representatives failed to allege any actual injury caused by Lithia Chevrolet. Lithia Hyundai is not even mentioned in the original complaint outside the caption naming the defendants. Thus, the consumers had a sufficient personal stake to guarantee adversity against Lithia Chrysler and Lithia Dodge by means of specific allegations against those two dealerships in the complaint, but no personal stake against Lithia Hyundai and Lithia Chevrolet, because they lacked adversity concerning those two dealerships. Hence, they lacked standing against these two dealerships under the basic interest-injury standard.