Consumer Class Action Lawsuits Newsletter

When plaintiff Paul Hancock bought a vehicle in February 2016, the complaint for this class action says, he financed it with a loan from Wells Fargo and purchased an auto insurance policy through Allstate. However, in May 2016, the complaint says, Wells Fargo force-placed an insurance policy on his vehicle and charged him $598 for it. The complaint alleges that Hancock repeatedly contacted Wells Fargo to tell them that he already had the necessary insurance coverage, but that the bank refused to return the money they had collected and continued to try to force him to pay for the insurance, including being charged a late fee as soon as the CPI policy was established. According to the complaint, Hancock was only one of 800,000 auto loan customers ensnared in the Wells Fargo and National General Insurance Company scheme, one that pushed 250,000 of them into delinquency and caused the unlawful repossession of nearly 25,000 vehicles.

The complaint for this class action charges that Fundbox, Inc., a business loan company, violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by making telemarketing calls to cells phones using automatic dialing systems. Fundbox made telemarketing calls to plaintiff James Everett Shelton’s cell phone, using an automatic dialing system, even though the phone was listed on the Do Not Call Registry.

The complaint for this class action alleges that retailer Forever 21 charged customers sales taxes on clothing that should have been exempt from it based on the purchaser’s send-to address. Plaintiff Laura Togut claims that she bought about twenty items of clothing from Forever 21’s website, with each item priced below $110, for a total of $283.40. The items were delivered to her New York City address, the complaint says, so the sale should have been exempt from sales tax, but Forever 21 charged an extra $22.90 for sales tax, bringing Togut’s order to $306.30.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was designed to stop abusive and persistent telemarketing to consumer phones, but it doesn’t just cover telemarketing calls and faxes; it includes telemarketing text messages as well. Plaintiff Melissa Humphreys alleges that Auto Insurance Specialists, LLC (AIS) sent a text message to her cell phone in an attempt to sell her auto insurance, which was made with the use of an automatic dialing system. The message read, “Home MSG: I can help reduce care insurance to only $29 a month if you call now Melissa! It takes 5 minutes to complete, but if not, you can reply NO”.

Plaintiff Mazen Fares alleges that Discover Financial Services called him on his cell phone six hundred times between August 2016 and the filing of this case, in a jaw-droppingly blatant violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The complaint claims that Discover called his cell phone repeatedly using an automatic dialing system and pre-recorded or artificial voice and called him several times in a day and on back-to-back days, with a high enough frequency that the calls can only have been intended to harass, thus also violating Florida debt-collection laws.

According to the complaint for this lawsuit, sometime around August 2015, Discover Financial Services began communicating with plaintiff Yaakov Kilberg by calling his cell phone, using an automatic dialer, a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Despite Kilberg’s telling Discover not to call him with an auto-dialer on his cell phone, Discover continued to call—four hundred and two times!

What could be more “natural” than a face and body liquid soap made from olive oil? Perhaps one without chemicals and preservatives?

This class action contends that two of the company’s products—Wellness® CORE® Adult Dry Ocean Whitefish, Herring Meal and Salmon Meal and Wellness® Complete Health Adult Dry Whitefish and Sweet Potato—are contaminated with lead and arsenic. Although the EPA has set limits on arsenic in bottled water at 10 ppb, and the FDA on lead in bottled water at 5 ppb, the complaint claims that independent testing has shown that these Wellness products contain well over 1,000 ppb of arsenic and around 220 ppb of lead.