Wells Fargo’s $142 million settlement to resolve class claims that it pressured its sales team to open bank accounts on behalf of customers without their authorization or consent stands following a Ninth Circuit ruling Monday.
Settlement objectors tried to argue that the class failed to meet federal Rule 23’s predominance requirement because the district court didn’t perform a choice-of-law analysis with respect to the class’s state law claims.
But the trial judge didn’t have to conduct the analysis before certifying the class for purposes of settlement, Judge Ronald M. Gould wrote for the appeals court.
The class demonstrated that it could prove its Fair Credit Reporting Act claim by a common course of conduct, and the class’s state law claims weren’t significant enough to destroy the predominance of questions under the federal law, Gould said.
