Nearly two years after it issued its initial decision in Johnson v. NPAS Sols., LLC, in which it held incentive awards for class representatives to be per se unlawful, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc, on Aug. 3, 2022. In choosing not to revisit its decision, the court confirmed that class representative incentive awards are prohibited as a matter of law within its jurisdiction – federal district courts in Alabama, Georgia and Florida.
In a refreshingly plain-spoken opinion issued Aug. 6, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals criticized a multimillion-dollar class action settlement in litigation over Google’s unauthorized use of internet tracking “cookies,” remanding to the District Court for more detailed findings of fact. 
In 2016, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins, holding that even when Congress has granted parties a statutory right, a procedural violation of that right will not by itself satisfy the “concrete harm” requirement for Article III standing. The Court explained that while harm must be “concrete,” it need not be “tangible.” With little guidance on what this distinction actually means, the Court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit, then denied a petition for writ of certiorari when the petitioners sought clarification on what constitutes a concrete, “intangible” harm.
On April 24, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an ambiguous arbitration agreement does not provide a sufficient basis to conclude that parties agreed to class arbitration.
The new year began with dramatic growth in vehicle total loss class actions over payment of sales tax and title transfer and registration fees, interpretations of the filed rate doctrine, and further activity in labor depreciation class actions.
