Class Actions & Aggregate Litigation

/Overview

We help you manage the risks and outcomes of a class action, to minimize disruption. Our team customizes a solution for the problem at hand, in a courtroom or conference room.

We anticipate issues and protect your entity proactively, before class action is filed. Once filed, we resolve it predictably and cost effectively.

We develop a tailored approach, focused on strategic defense and efficient resolution, and alert to alternatives that protect reputation, resources, and time. Our approaches have led to favorable results, in and out of court, in cases collectively involving millions of potential class members.

Our value is honed by experience, having litigated in more than half of the 50 states and represented clients in thousands of class actions with collective amounts at issue over $1 trillion. We defend class actions alleging consumer and commercial claims. And we serve as national coordinating counsel for repetitive actions.

Enlist us to advance your objectives.

/Representative experience

• Principal outside counsel in developing the program that has minimized consumer class action exposure for one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies
• Defended franchisor and franchisees in two putative class actions based on temporary closure during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeking refunds and damages. Also defended assisted living facility owner in putative class action in connection with COVID-19 care. Secured dismissals in all three matters.
• In Florida class actions under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (and its amendment by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act), we were brought in after initial efforts at resolution had failed. In addition to reframing the litigation for our client, we were able to construct an exit strategy in the case that has resolved the plaintiff’s claims, multiple cross-claims, and a collateral declaratory judgment action, all for less than continued costs of litigation.
• In the largest consumer class action in history, with over 200 million class members and minimum statutory damages of $500 billion to well over $1 trillion, successfully represented a prominent data company that refused to settle when the others in its industry did.
• Counsel to hospitals in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New York in litigation against the CMS regarding the calculation of disproportionate share payments under the Medicaid statute; secured injunction against CMS regarding enforcement of illegally enacted policies, which was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Then won fee award pursuant to the Equal Access to Justice Act.
• Lead litigation counsel for 10+ companies spread among various industries defending against claims relating to Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). In one circuit court case, successfully argued that the accrual date for BIPA purposes was the first date that the challenged device was used, not each subsequent use, which resulted in the dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims.
• Represented leading medical device manufacturer in an action in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which alleged violations of the TCPA involving prerecorded calls regarding educational seminars; first successfully defeated plaintiff’s motion for class certification, and then successfully obtained summary judgment on plaintiff’s individual claims.
• Representing approximately 500 individual plaintiffs in lawsuits against the State of New Hampshire and its youth detention facilities, which have been targets of criminal investigations into allegations of physical and sexual abuse by staffers.
• For the world’s largest wine company, settled a nationwide class action over millions of bottles of allegedly fraudulent wine, not only for less than seven figures, but for less than the settlement paid by the client’s major competitor. Also represented that client in defeating multiple lawsuits alleging the presence of arsenic in their wines, including defeating efforts to create a multidistrict litigation and eventually achieving dismissals in five different jurisdictions.
• For a leading technology company, eliminated both a mass action and a mass arbitration that threatened to disrupt its unique sales and distribution channels.

/Recognition

• Nixon Peabody has been named a Tier 1 firm in Boston and Buffalo for Mass Tort Litigation / Class Actions - Defendants, and in Rochester for Bet-the-Company Litigation, by U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” in 2023
• Nixon Peabody has been recommended by The Legal 500 United States 2022 editorial for Dispute resolution - Product liability, mass tort and class action: toxic tort - defense