What you are about to read is the result of a forensic investigation into the electronic Court Files of a class action settlement. A Federal Court approved it and its Order and Final Judgment are now on appeal. Even before the Order and Judgment, the very fact of settlement negotiations without more has caused Courts to stay other class actions and to put the burden of proof on plaintiffs that their cases are not precluded by the class action settlement.
They were against it before they were for it.
The defendants in a Federal class action case in Florida, Fladell, et al., Plaintiffs v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., et al., Defendants (S.D. Fla. Case No. 13-cv-60721), argued against class certification of the lender force-placed insurance (“LFPI”) claims alleged against them and against certification of any of the classes urged by the plaintiffs in that case. Two months later the defendants settled the Fladell case and urged the Federal Judge presiding over that case to approve more claims and more classes than the plaintiffs themselves sought to certify, which he eventually did.
Even before their settlement agreement was judicially approved, the same defendants successfully raised the very fact of settlement negotiations as a bar to other LFPI claims in other States, or as a way to shift the burden of proof to the plaintiffs in those cases to prove that their cases are not included in the settlement in Florida. See, e.g., Keller v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 2014 WL 6684895 *2-*3 (W.D. Wash. November 25, 2014)(granting “limited injunction” against defendants foreclosing on plaintiffs’ home so as to allow the plaintiffs to prove that their case is not included in the Fladell settlement); Ali v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 2014 WL 819385 *2 (W.D. Okla. March 3, 2014)(granting defendants’ motion to stay LFPI claims of plaintiffs who were not parties in the Florida case, unless those plaintiffs could prove that their claims were not settled in Fladell); Ursomano v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 2014 WL 644340 *1-*2 (N.D. Cal. February 19, 2014)(granting defendants’ motion to stay LFPI claims alleged by people who were not parties to the Florida case because the Fladell settlement might bar them).
The Federal Court in Florida never considered let alone adjudicated any of the issues raised by the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary certification of a class in Fladell.
Continued from Part One, posted on Insurance Claims and Issues Blog yesterday, Monday, December 29, 2014. Part Two posted in full on Thomson Reuters' Legal Solutions Blog on December 18, 2014.
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