United States Ninth Circuit

The district court's approval of the settlement of a class action against credit reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act is reversed and remanded, where: 1) the district court abused its discretion in approving this settlement where the class representatives and class counsel did not adequately represent the interests of the class; and 2) the settlement agreement created a divergence of interests between the named representatives and the class because incentive awards were conditioned on the class representatives' support for the settlement and significantly exceeded in amount what absent class members could expect to get upon settlement approval.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/22/2013
• Published 04/22/2013

Judges

• GOULD

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel