Insurance Litigation Law Blog | Regulatory Law | Bad Faith | California | Lawyer | Attorney | Barger & Wolen

In a follow up to last week’s post regarding the Nelson v. Pearson opinion, the Ninth Circuit has now applied similar principles when applying California state law. In Rubio v. Capital One Company, the Ninth Circuit further confirmed that all that is required to establish a plaintiff’s standing under the California Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”) is an allegation of some lost “money or property” fairly traceable to unlawful, unfair, and/or fraudulent conduct by the defendant.

Raquel Rubio (“Rubio) received a credit card solicitation from Capital One Bank (“Capital One”) offering a 6.99% fixed rate. The fixed rate was further explained in smaller text on the page as being fixed, so long as none of three conditions occurred: (1) a late payment; (2) charges are made over the credit limit; and (3) a payment is returned for any reason. Rubio did not allow any of those conditions to occur; however, three years later, Rubio received a letter noting that her APR of 6.99% would increase to 15.9%. Rubio could avoid the increase only by closing her credit card account and paying off the balance on the card by the end of the next month. Capital One defended the hike in interest rate by referring to additional language in eight-point type, found under the heading “Terms of Service,” that stated “[m]y Agreement terms (for example, rates and fees) are subject to change.”

Rubio brought suit alleging violations of the federal Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”), the UCL and breach of contract. The Ninth Circuit agreed with the District Court by finding that there was no breach of contract because the solicitation was not a contract, and therefore, Capital One was not bound by its terms. The Ninth Circuit found however that it was error for the District Court to dismiss Rubio’s TILA claims because Capital One failed to show that its APR disclosure in the solicitation was “in a reasonably understandable form and readily noticeable to the consumer.” Therefore, the Court reversed the trial court’s decision to dismiss the TILA claim, sending it back for further proceedings.

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The California Court of Appeal, in Nelson v. Pearson Ford Co., issued a lengthy 50-page opinion on July 15 addressing numerous issues, including violations of the Automobile Sales Finance Act (“ASFA”), the Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”), the Consumer Legal Remedies Act (“CLRA”), class treatment and the right to recover fees in class actions.

Most poignant for insurers were the portions of the opinion addressing the UCL claim, and more specifically, the named plaintiff’s standing to pursue his UCL claim.

Reginald Nelson (“Plaintiff”) decided to purchase a used vehicle from Pearson Ford (“Pearson”) and executed a sales contract to that effect. Because, at the time of purchase, Plaintiff lacked auto insurance, an insurance broker was summoned to the dealership and sold Plaintiff an auto policy. A premium of $250 was added to the vehicle’s price. 

One week after the parties had completed the agreement, Pearson had additional paperwork for Plaintiff to sign. The new paperwork rescinded the original contract and entered the parties into a new agreement. The parties backdated the second contract to the date they signed the original contract. As a result of changing interest rates between the time the first and second contracts were entered, the backdating resulted in Plaintiff having to pay an additional $27 finance charge. The second contract disclosed the total finance charge, but the additional $27 was not separately itemized. Additionally, the second contract improperly added the $250 insurance premium to the cash price of the vehicle, which caused Plaintiff to pay $30 in additional sales tax and financing charges on the insurance premium.

Plaintiff later filed a class action complaint seeking to establish two distinct classes (both of which would ultimately be certified): (1) a class regarding the backdating of financing agreements (the “backdating class”); and (2) the improper inclusion of the price of insurance into the price of the vehicle (the “insurance class”). 

Following a bench trial, the court found Pearson had violated the UCL with regard to the backdating class, granting injunctive relief and setting restitution in the amount of $50 per class member. 

For the insurance class, the court found that Pearson violated the ASFA and the UCL by failing to disclose the cost of insurance and adding the insurance cost to the cash price of the car. It also enjoined Pearson from adding the price of insurance to the cash price of a vehicle in the future. Following the entry of judgment, Pearson appealed on numerous grounds. 

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On July 15, 2010, the United States. Senate passed the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010. The bill now goes to President Obama for his signature, which is expected in the coming days.

The bill, which is over 1,600 pages, establishes new regulations designed to prevent the repeat of the recent financial crisis and end the prospect of future government bailouts. Oversight is established through the creation of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (“Council”).

Members of the Council consist of the heads of several Federal financial regulatory agencies and departments (including the Treasury Secretary who is to act as the Chairman of the Council) and an independent member having insurance expertise who will be appointed by the President subject to Senate confirmation. 

Article V of the bill covers insurance and creates within the Treasury Department a new Office of National Insurance (“Office”). The Office will monitor the insurance industry, coordinate international insurance issues, and provide a study with recommendations to Congress on ways to modernize insurance regulation.        

Various duties that the Office will oversee include:

1. Monitoring all aspects of the insurance industry and identifying issues or gaps in the regulation of insurers that could contribute to a systemic crisis in the insurance industry or U.S. financial system.
2. Identifying entities that could become subject to regulation by the Council.
3. Coordinating federal efforts on prudent aspects of international insurance matters.
4. Consulting with state regulators on insurance matters of national and international importance.
5. Advising the Secretary of Treasury on major domestic and international insurance policy issues.
6. Providing ability to collect financial information from certain insurers (smaller insurers may be exempt).

Robert W. Hogeboom, Senior Regulatory Attorney with Barger & Wolen, along with several insurance executive members of the Pacific Association of Domestic Insurance Companies (PADIC) were escorted by staff of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) in late June to meet with key legislators from the California House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in Washington D.C. to discuss the legislation and its effect on California insurers. 

Most important to the insurance industry is the fact that within 18 months the Office must conduct a study and issue a report to Congress providing recommendations on how to modernize and improve the system of insurance regulation in the United States.

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The Supreme Court of California today issued its decision in Clayworth v. Pfizer, Inc., addressing issues raised under California’s antitrust statute, The Clayton Act, and California’s Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”). Under each statute, the Court rejected defenses raised by the defendants and reversed a summary judgment issued in their favor.

An array of retail pharmacies brought suit against pharmaceutical manufacturers over the defendants’ alleged price-fixing in the sale of brand-name pharmaceuticals in the United States, whereby the cost of such drugs sold in this country were artificially inflated. The manufacturers contended that the pharmacies were not damaged since they were able to pass along the forced overcharges to third party customers or their health insurance plans. In cross-motions for summary judgment, the manufacturers urged that the “pass-on defense” precluded the pharmacies’ claims under both the Clayton Act and the UCL. 

The trial court agreed with the manufacturers and held that the pass-on defense was available under the Clayton Act to show the pharmacies suffered no compensable damages and further demonstrated the lack of standing under the UCL since the pharmacies could not show any “lost money or property.”  After the Court of Appeal affirmed the ruling, the Supreme Court granted review.

The bulk of the Supreme Court’s decision addressed the Cartwright Act claim. After discussing the statutory language of both federal (i.e., the Sherman Act) and state antitrust law, and the development of the pass-on defense under each, the Court found that, unlike federal law, the Cartwright Act provides that indirect purchasers as well as direct purchasers may sue for price fixing. As a consequence, with the exception of a few situations not applicable in the case before it, antitrust violators may not assert as a defense that any illegal overcharges had been passed on by a direct purchaser plaintiff to indirect purchasers, and therefore the full measure of the overcharge is recoverable by the direct purchaser.  

In turning to the UCL claim, the issue was primarily one of standing. The Court concluded that the plaintiff pharmacies possessed standing even under the more restrictive standard established in 2004 by Proposition 64 since the pharmacies had “lost money or property as a result of the defendant’s unfair business practices,” with the lost money being the overcharges they had paid due to the price-fixing scheme. That the pharmacies may have passed along their increased costs to consumers and thus not be able to prove any right to restitution was beside the point, since the Court would not “conflate[] the issue of standing with the issue of the remedies to which a party may be entitled.” The same rule applied as to the defense of mitigation of damages – it is not a basis to extinguish standing. 

As for the issue of “remedies” under the UCL claim, and for which the pharmacies sought only restitution and injunctive relief, the Court avoided the issue of restitution and focused solely on the issue of injunctive relief, finding the asserted lack of monetary loss to be no obstacle to the clam for injunctive relief. Since there was standing, there was the right to pursue injunctive relief, and there was no need for the plaintiffs to have a viable claim for restitution in order to seek injunctive relief. The Court found that there is nothing in the UCL that “conditions a court’s authority to order injunctive relief on the need in a given case to also order restitution” because the “two are wholly independent remedies.” Since a finding that the pharmacies could pursue injunctive relief was sufficient to preclude summary judgment for the manufacturers, the Court expressed “no opinion . . . . [as to] whether the pharmacies may eventually be entitled to restitution.” 

Clayworth is but the first of several UCL cases pending before the California Supreme Court, as discussed in one of our prior blogs.

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In a pair of decisions published this month by two separate Districts of the California Court of Appeal, the appellate panels upheld class action settlements and rejected numerous claims asserted by objectors. Both cases demonstrate that, when a class action settlement is well-documented, and the trial court carefully considers the requisite factors, a settlement will be approved as fair, adequate and reasonable.

In Nordstrom Commissions Cases, the class plaintiffs sued Nordstrom in 2004 over its alleged improper policy of paying net sales commissions in violation of the California Labor Code (the actual net sales commissions plan had been approved in a prior class action settlement).  In 2009 the parties reached a settlement in which Nordstrom would pay money, provide merchandise vouchers, and make prospective changes to its calculation, payment and reporting of commissions. After preliminary approval of the settlement by the trial court, an objector contended the settlement was unfair, which objection the trial court found to lack merit. The objector appealed.

After confirming that the role of the appellate court is not to make any independent determination as to whether the settlement terms are fair, adequate and reasonable, but merely to ensure that the trial court acted within its broad discretion, the Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District (Division Three) proceeded to address each of the assertions raised by the objector. The basic theory of the objector was that the plaintiffs' case was strong and not properly considered by the trial court in approving the settlement.

However, the appellate court found that the evidence as to the purported "willfulness" of Nordstrom in its alleged improper commission payment practices was subject to a good faith dispute since, among other things, Nordstrom paid the plaintiffs according to its written commission agreements, the payment plan had been approved in a prior class action settlement, and the Labor Commissioner had refused to find a violation in two different cases raising similar issues. The court also rejected the objector's claims that the trial court had not properly considered the issue of penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (Labor Code Section 2699) and that the settlement was partially funded by in-store merchandise coupons. On the latter claim, the court cited a number of recent appellate decisions where settlements involving coupons or merchandise vouchers were upheld.

In another case involving alleged improper wage practices and violation of the Labor Code, the Second Appellate District (Division Eight) reached the same conclusion that a class settlement was properly approved within the trial court's discretion in Munoz v. BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles.   There, the plaintiffs contended that the defendant has allegedly misclassified production supervisors and merchandising supervisors as exempt employees. After the trial court preliminarily approved that settlement, one person objected, and when the objection was overruled, he appealed the finding of fairness. While asserting a panoply of claims against the settlement, the gist of the objector's claim was that the parties had not provided the trial court with adequate information to make a determination of fairness.

Like the Nordstrom case, this case also involved a prior class action settlement against the defendant, which resolution was used by the parties in support of the current proposed settlement. As such, the appellate court easily found that the trial court had an understanding as to the amount in controversy and the realistic range of outcomes of the litigation, "despite the absence of a statement of the maximum value of all claims." 

As concerns the contention that the parties in this second class action against the defendant had not conducted adequate discovery, the court found that the prior and ample discovery in the first class action, raising the same issues, could be used by the trial court to find that the factual record had been sufficiently developed to satisfy the trial court that the release of the class members' claims was reasonable in light of the strengths and weakness of the case. As such, and after rejecting a number of other issues raised by he objector, the Court of Appeal found there was no abuse of discretion in the trial court's approval of the settlement.

Class action settlements inevitably result in claims by objectors, whether in the form of "professional" objectors or persons who legitimately believe the settlement reached between the parties was "unfair." So long as the parties, in reaching and documenting their settlement, provide the trial court with the requisite data to find that the settlement was fair, adequate and reasonable, it will be the rare case in which appellate review will second-guess the broad discretion provided to trial courts to resolve these types of lawsuits.

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While not yet approved by the United States Senate, the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) – the first time an entity in the federal government has been created to specifically address the insurance industry – moved that much closer to reality when the House of Representatives on June 30 passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, H.R. 4173.  The bill passed the House by a vote of 237-192.

The Senate is expected to vote on the bill when it returns from its July 4 recess on July 12.

The FIO will be housed under the U.S. Treasury Department, though it will not have any regulatory authority. Among other things, the FIO will gather information regarding the insurance industry, will monitor the industry for systemic risks, and will serve as a negotiator for international insurance treaties. The bill contains a provision that will modernize and streamline the surplus lines and non-admitted markets. As explained by the National Underwriter, the “surplus lines provisions in the bill dictate that in any multi-state placement of surplus lines, the only state whose rules govern access to the products is the state in which the insurance is placed—the ‘principal place of business’ for the insured.”

Just prior to passage in the House, the bill dropped a tax on financial institutions to raise $19 billion to pay for implementation of the bill over five years, a provision strongly opposed by the insurance industry.

Speaking for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), its President and West Virginia Insurance Commissioner Jane L. Cline thanked the congressional negotiators for essentially preserving the role of state insurance regulators in protecting consumers and ensuring the viability of the insurance industry, stating, “We were pleased to see that the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) set up under the bill is narrowly designed to carry out its mission while not unnecessarily undermining strong state regulation.”  NAIC President Cline also stated: 

“The package provides senior investment protection grants for annuity suitability, an area where the NAIC and the states have a solid track record,” and “The bill also provides important clarification in regulatory authority for indexed annuities, ensuring that these guaranteed products are under the clear authority of state insurance regulators.”

While the bill will allow federal regulators to wind down troubled large institutions, the NAIC further stated that the bill made “clear that state insurance regulators will continue to have the ability to ‘wall off’ insurance companies from troubled holding companies, protecting insurance policyholders from other risks in the financial system” and that state regulators “will also retain their role to monitor consumer protections in the insurance sector.”

When the Obama administration first proposed a national insurance office last year, California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner stated at the time that such plan “appropriately acknowledges the primary role the states play in regulating the insurance business to benefit consumers. State oversight of insurance companies, coordinated among all state regulators, is the reason that, among all the financial players in this country, it is the insurers who are and remain the most stable and the least in need of federal assistance.”

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