Cruz-Alvarez and Stamps Preview Supreme Court Class Action Standing Case

Shook Partner Frank Cruz-Alvarez and Associate Britta Stamps have written "High Court Takes Up No-Injury Class Action Standing in Transunion Case" for the Washington Legal Foundation's Legal Pulse. The article previews Trans Union LLC v. Ramirez, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court centered on "whether unnamed class members who suffered no actual injury have standing to recover for claims of statutory violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act ('FCRA')."

"Specific to the FCRA, TransUnion emphasized in its cert petition that Ramirez stipulated that less than 25% of the 8,814 class members had their credit report disseminated to a third party during the class period, and offered no evidence that any other class member was impacted by the OFAC alert. Those class members may not have even opened the letter from TransUnion, much less suffered any further injury beyond the bare statutory violation. But this case could reach other statutory violations beyond the FCRA. It is easy to imagine a number of statutes under which many – or all – absent class members suffer no actual injury from a violation," Cruz-Alvarez and Stamps explain. "Whether the high court chooses to extend any ruling beyond the FCRA remains to be seen, but TransUnion’s cert petition subtly invites a decision applicable to statutory violations beyond strictly the FCRA."