Press

Elizabeth A. Kramer

On March 20, 2019, the Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding a cy pres-only class action settlement and remanded for further proceedings—not on the merit of the settlement, but regarding whether the plaintiffs have ...

Trevor Tan

On December 1, 2018, several amendments to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect. While not transformative, the amendments clarify the process by which federal courts assess and approve class action settlements.

Most ...

Jordan Elias and Adam E. Polk

In two January 2019 opinions written by the two newest Justices, the Supreme Court added to its ever-growing body of arbitration jurisprudence.

The unanimous decisions in Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc. and New Prime Inc. v ...

Scott Grzenczyk

In individual litigation, a plaintiff files a lawsuit on his or her own behalf and can only bring legal claims under the laws of states with a connection to the harm suffered or the defendant’s illegal conduct. But in a class action lawsuit, a plaintiff ...

Scott Grzenczyk

Class action lawsuits allow plaintiffs to pursue the legal rights of a large group of consumers—sometimes hundreds of thousands—who were all affected by the same illegal conduct. But what happens when a small portion of that group wasn’t harmed ...

Elizabeth A. Kramer

University of Southern California (USC) students and alumni today filed a class action settlement agreement resolving claims related to gynecologist George Tyndall, M.D. that will require USC to adopt and implement procedures for ...

Simon S. Grille

Last year, a group of consumers sued Uber for flooding their cell phones with unwanted text messages.  The consumers claimed that they had never signed up for Uber’s services but were still getting bombarded with Uber text messages, even after telling ...

If you are wondering what a class action lawsuit is, you’re not alone. Class action lawsuits tend to be highly complex, and they require an experienced lawyer at the helm. The actual definition of a class action, though, is fairly simple: in a class action, a person or ...

On November 21, 2018, U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted preliminary approval to settlements with Lenovo and Superfish totaling $8.3 million.

The consumer class action arose from the undisclosed installation of technology called VisualDiscovery ...

The Supreme Court agreed last month to address whether district courts must accept the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) interpretations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)—the statute that protects consumers from receiving marketing ...

The American Law Institute announced that Dena Sharp has been elected as a new member of the Institute.

ALI members are prominent judges, lawyers, and law professors who are confidentially nominated by their peers, vetted by ALI’s Membership Committee, and ...

Girard Sharp Lawyers Adam E. Polk and Scott Grzenczyk recently presented on the First Circuit’s decision in In re Asacol Antitrust Litigation for the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section, Class Action and Derivative Suits subcommittee. Adam and ...

Jordan Elias— November 28, 2018

Many of the largest and most significant class actions wind up in a multidistrict litigation. What’s an “MDL” and how is it different from a regular court proceeding?

The MDL Statute

A federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1407, governs ...

Trevor Tan — November 15, 2018

Class action attorneys often seek to represent many thousand potential class members. Identifying them can sometimes pose a challenge. In some cases, class members can only be identified based on the defendant’s records. 

But what if ...

Elizabeth A. Kramer— November 9, 2018

On October 31 the Supreme Court heard argument in a “cy pres only” settlement case. Based on the argument, the original cy pres question that was presented in Frank v. Gaos may be eclipsed by questions about whether the class ...

Simon S. Grille— November 8, 2018

A hidden arbitration provision can’t help Viacom defend claims that it illegally collected the personal information of kids who played its “Llama Spit Spit” cell phone game, a federal judge ruled last month.  

The ...

Jordan Elias— October 25, 2018

For forty years, consumers haven’t been able to bring antitrust claims under the Sherman Act. Depending on how the Supreme Court decides a case this term, that may be about to change.

Illinois Brick

In its 1977 Illinois Brick decision ...

Angelica Ornelas— October 23, 2018

Class actions are an effective way to hold banks, corporations, and others accountable for unlawful practices, defective products, and other wrongdoing. (For more details about how a class action works, please see our ...

Simon S. Grille— October 22, 2018

In a win for consumers, the California Court of Appeal has revived a class action lawsuit about “One A Day” vitamins that are actually “two a day” vitamins. It turns out that “nano-type print” on the back of the jar says ...

Elizabeth A. Kramer— October 19, 2018

The term cy pres is from the French phrase “cy pres comme possible,” which means “as near as possible.”  In the class action context, it refers to distributing settlement funds to third-party organizations when those ...

Jordan Elias— October 15, 2018

When many people think of class actions, they think of a postcard describing a settlement in tiny print and often offering little in the way of a payment. At Girard Sharp we believe class actions can be a vital tool to get money back to ...

Simon S. Grille— October 11, 2018

Girard Sharp has filed a consolidated complaint against Apple alleging that Apple manufactured and sold MacBook laptops that have defective “butterfly” keyboards.  The complaint asserts that minimal amounts of dust or debris ...

Together, Daniel Girard and Eric Gibbs built Girard Gibbs’s national reputation for innovation and excellence in complex litigation. Over 20 years, the firm’s lawyers earned the trust of clients and courts and helped shaped the law in a variety of practice areas ...

Hosted by the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and the Electronic Discovery Institute (EDI), Dena Sharp served as a co-chair and faculty member for the Fourth Annual Judicial Training Symposium for Federal Judges. The event, taking place on November 14, 2018, brought ...

A California federal court appointed Girard Sharp lawyers to lead a consumer class action alleging that Apple sold defective MacBook laptops. The Court’s order gives the firm and its co-counsel “sole authority over all matters concerning the prosecution of ...

A federal judge in the Eastern District of New York has denied a motion to dismiss complaints filed on behalf of purchasers of a prescription dry eye treatment called Restasis. The complaints allege that the pharmaceutical giant Allergan, maker of Restasis, has ...

Girard Sharp and its co-lead counsel have delivered settlements of more than $104 million for end purchasers of a prescription pain patch called Lidoderm. A California federal judge on September 12, 2018 approved the “excellent” settlement ending claims that ...

The National Law Journal has named Girard Sharp as a 2018 Elite Trial Lawyers finalist in the areas of Financial Products and Privacy/Data Breach. The NLJ’s editors and researchers published the finalists on July 26, 2018, and the honorees were selected from among ...

On July 10, 2018, Northern California Super Lawyers released its annual listing of Super Lawyers and Rising Stars, which honors “outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high-degree of peer recognition and professional ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – June 1, 2018 – Victims of the storage tank disaster at Pacific Fertility Center have filed an amended complaint in their class action lawsuit, which provides new information and developments related to the March 2018 tank failure incident.  ...

Three class action lawsuits focused on the mishandling of thousands of embryos and eggs at Pacific Fertility Center have now been combined in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. The federal judge overseeing the case appointed Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane ...

Thousands of Eggs and Embryos Were Put at Grave Risk by the Unprecedented Storage Tank Malfunction

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–San Francisco-based law firm Girard Gibbs LLP along with the law firm of Sauder Schelkopf LLC have filed a class action lawsuit in San ...

The American Law Institute announced on October 19 that Jordan Elias, a Girard Sharp partner, has been elected as a new member of the Institute.

ALI members are prominent judges, lawyers, and law professors who are confidentially nominated by their peers ...

In December 2016, Yahoo announced a massive data breach, affecting 1 billion user accounts. But, it turns out, the breach was much larger than Yahoo admitted.

On October 3, 2017, Yahoo’s new owner, Verizon, announced that the 2013 Yahoo breach was three times larger ...