Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff purchased travel arrangements through Expedia, Inc.'s ("Expedia") website and Expedia emailed him a receipt, which included the expiration date of his credit card. Plaintiff claimed that this email receipt violated the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act ("FACTA"), Pub. L. No. 108-159, 117 Stat. 1952, an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq., in part to combat identity theft. At issue was the meaning of the words "print" and "electronically printed" under FACTA, in connection with an email receipt. The court held that "print" referred to many different technologies, all of which involve the making of tangible impression on paper or other tangible medium. The court also held that a receipt, under FACTA that was transmitted to the consumer via email and then digitally displayed on the consumer's screen was not an "electronically printed" receipt. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

Plaintiff, on behalf of himself and a class of owners and lessors of 2007 model year and older Volkswagen and Audi vehicles, alleged that defendant, Volkswagen of America, Inc., limited the availability of replacement vehicle keys and failed to sufficiently disclose information about the potential difficulty and expense of obtaining such replacements. At issue was whether objector-appellant had Article III standing to appeal a settlement agreement between the parties. The court dismissed the appeal for lack of standing and held that objector-appellant, who expressly disavowed any financial interest in the fee defendant was ordered to pay to plaintiff's counsel, failed to demonstrate how he had suffered injury as a result of the fee order.

Plaintiffs, manufactures of a bear-resistant container called the Ursack S29 model and three individual users of the Ursack, sued the Sierra Interagency Black Bear Group ("SIBBG"), as well as national and forest park services (collectively, "defendants"), where defendants withdrew conditional approval of the S29 model and refused to permit backpackers to use the S29 in the container-only areas of defendants' national parks and forests. At issue was whether SIBBG's decision to revoke conditional approval of the S29 model was arbitrary and capricious. The court held that SIBBG's decision to revoke conditional approval of the S29 model was not arbitrary or capricious where the court could not conclude that the SIBBG, although it did not mention overflow food problems in the course of its debate, ignored this aspect of the problem; where the distinctions the SIBBG made between the BearVault and the Ursack were rational; and where SIBBG's tree-damage rationale, prohibiting users from tying the S29 model to trees, was not arbitrary or capricious.

Westwood Apex, a subsidiary entity of Westwood College, filed a breach of contract action against defendant to recover an unpaid student loan in San Bernardino County Superior Court. Defendant, a former Westwood College student, filed a class action counterclaim alleging that Westwood Apex and Westwood College committed fraud and engaged in unfair and deceptive business practices in connection with their operation of the college. Westwood College subsequently filed a notice of removal in the Central District of California. At issue was whether section 5 of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 ("CAFA"), 28 U.S.C. 1453(b), allowed a party joined to an action as a defendant to a counterclaim, an additional counterclaim defendant, to remove the case to federal court. The court held that section 1453(b) did not permit additional counterclaim defendants to remove an action to federal court and therefore, affirmed the district court's decision to remand the case to state courts.

Plaintiffs appealed the dismissal of their putative class action asserting antitrust claims against defendants where plaintiffs alleged that the fares they paid for airline tickets were unlawfully excessive and in violation of both state and federal antitrust and consumer protection laws. At issue was whether plaintiffs' state law claims were properly dismissed; whether the court erred in denying plaintiffs' leave to amend to add federal claims; and whether the court had jurisdiction to review the interlocutory case management order governing the pretrial coordination of pending cases in the same multidistrict litigation. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' state law claims and held that the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, 49 U.S.C. 41713, preempted state regulations of foreign air carriers. The court also held that the district court erred in denying plaintiffs' leave to amend to add federal antitrust claims where the district court applied an incorrect legal standard to plaintiffs' motion by denying leave to amend on the basis of the court's prior case management order. The court further held that it lacked jurisdiction to review the interlocutory case management order where these decisions did not represent final judgments.

Plaintiffs, various tenants of Norton Community Apartments, L.P. ("Norton"), sued Norton over rent disputes and other claims. At issue was whether International Realty & Investments, Inc. ("International Realty"), the agent appointed by a receiver to manage and collect rents on the Norton property, was a debt collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act ("Act"). Also at issue was whether the district court's sanctions against plaintiffs' counsel for filing multiple identical actions and the district court's award of attorneys' fees to defendant for opposing plaintiffs' disqualification motions was an abuse of discretion. The court held that International Realty, as the residential property manager in this case, was not a debt collector because it acquired the debt before default and thus exempted it, as the manager, from the Act. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in sanctioning plaintiffs' counsel where plaintiffs' counsel filed nine separate but identical actions for alleged violations of the Act and the district court did not abuse its discretion in awarding sanctions where there was no legal basis for the motion to disqualify defense counsel.

Plaintiffs sued defendant, Clearwire US LLC, alleging that defendant's early termination fee ("ETF")constituted an unlawful penalty and that the provisions in defendant's service agreement permitted defendant to charge customers an ETF if service was terminated before the end of the fixed contract term. At issue was whether the fees that an internet and telephone service provider charged to customers who cancel service before the expiration of a fixed-term contract were alternative performance provisions or liquidated damages. The court held that the answer to this issue was unclear and therefore certified this question to the Washington Supreme Court.