Link: Lanteri V. Credit Protection Association LP, 1:13-cv-1501-WTL-MJD (S.D. Ind., Sept. 26, 2018).
Plaintiff, represented by Philipps & Philipps Ltd., Keogh Law, Ltd., and Macey and Aleman, P.C., sought to certify two classes in their Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit against CPA. The suit alleges CPA continued to send texts to the class after they sent a “stop” text message in response or while the debt was subject to an automatic stay order of a bankruptcy court.
The court affirmed the “stop” class after dealing with the following language in the Plaintiff’s representation/retainer agreement:
If Client abandons the class and settles on an individual basis against the advice of Attorneys, Client shall be obligated to pay Attorneys their normal hourly rates for the time they expended in the case, and shall be obligated to reimburse the Attorneys for all expenses incurred.
The court found this objectionable but allowed the class to be certified if Plaintiff files an amended agreement without that language.
As the Defendants concede, the fee arrangement does not explicitly prohibit the Plaintiff from settling, and the Court notes that the arrangement does not impose any fees, costs, or expenses on the Plaintiff were she to agree to a class settlement against her attorneys’ advice. Nonetheless, as the Defendants also indicate, the arrangement creates the appearance of a possible conflict with respect to the Plaintiff’s ability to freely withdraw her claim or settle her claim against her attorneys’ advice.
The court, judge William T. Lawrence, also found that the bankruptcy class was not ascertainable:
The problem with this proposed class is that the Plaintiff has not provided a mechanism for how it will identify its members. The Plaintiff suggests that it can start from the list of persons who were called during the relevant time period and whose accounts were given a certain code by the Defendants, and then perform a “ministerial act” of reviewing bankruptcy court dockets to determine which of those persons filed for bankruptcy. This suggestion ignores the fact that this method would not identify the Plaintiff herself or others like her who filed for bankruptcy but whose account was not coded as doing so by the Defendants. It also equates filing for bankruptcy with the imposition of an automatic stay, when there are circumstances in which a bankruptcy filing does not result in a stay. See 11 U.S.C. § 362. The determination of whether there was an automatic stay in a particular case and, if so, until what date, is not necessarily a ministerial act. The Plaintiff offers no explanation of how “compar[ing] bankruptcy filing dates to call dates,” Dkt. No. 183 at 14, will be sufficient to determine whether the call dates were made during the pendency of an automatic stay; she does not address the need to determine (1) if an automatic stay did, in fact, take effect; and (2) if so, when the stay was lifted. In addition, if the class member filed under Chapter 13, any claim that accrued during the pendency of the bankruptcy proceeding was property of the estate, and if it was not disclosed as an asset during the pendency of the bankruptcy case, it cannot be pursued without reopening that case. Rainey v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 466 Fed. Appx. 542 (7th Cir. 2012).