Class Actions and Deny Customers Their Day in Court
A Florida Appeals Court on Tuesday shut off the escape hatch for a payday lending company that charged its customers excessive interest rates then tried to avoid liability by banning a class action lawsuit.
Public Justice represented a number of Florida consumers who filed a class action against McKenzie Check Advance, arguing that the companyâs attempt to ban class actions violated Florida public policy. The court agreed, rejecting McKenzieâs claim that customers had to bring their claims in arbitration, not in court, because the companyâs loan contract forbids class actions.
âWeâre extremely pleased that the Court of Appeal saw through McKenzieâs attempt to use its fine print contract to give it immunity from the stateâs consumer protection laws,â said Public Justice Senior Attorney Paul Bland, who argued the appeal. âThe court sent a clear message today that consumers canât be robbed of their day in court by a sentence buried within an arbitration clause that prohibits class actions in cases where thatâs the only way for consumers to obtain any remedy.â
The Court of Appealâs ruling affirms the findings of the court below, which held after an evidentiary hearing that the plaintiffsâwho sought to assert claims against McKenzie that, for most consumers, would only amount to a few hundreds of dollarsâcould not effectively pursue their claims on an individual basis because the amount at issue was too small, and the claims against the lender too complex.
At the hearing, Public Justice presented the testimony of several prominent Florida consumer attorneys who testified that it would be âvirtually impossibleâ for an individual consumer to find representation in a payday loan case absent a class action.
The court stated that the âinability to bring a class action suit against McKenzie would eviscerate the remedial purposesâ of Floridaâs consumer protection statutes, and concluded that âonly with the availability of class representation would consumersâ rights in these payday loan transactions be vindicated.â
In addition to Bland, Public Justiceâs legal team consists of lead counsel E. Clayton Yates of Yates & Mancini, LLC of Fort Pierce, Fla.; Theodore J. Leopold and Diana L. Martin of Leopold~Kuvin in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; Christopher Casper of James, Hoyer, Newcomer & Smiljanich of Tampa, Fla.; Richard Fisher of Cleveland, Tenn.; and Public Justiceâs Goldberg Attorney Amy Radon. Radon was the principal author of the plaintiffsâ briefs on the appeal.
###
Public Justice is a national public interest law firm that fights injustice and holds corporate and government wrongdoers accountable. See our website at www.publicjustice.