David R. Watkins, et al. v. Brian F. Spector, et al.

After a data breach at Equifax disclosed nearly 150 million Americans’ sensitive personal information, 300 class actions against Equifax were consolidated into one case. Nearly 70 claims in the master complaint survived a motion to dismiss, including some claims for one national class and distinct statespecific claims for dozens of proposed subclasses. The proposed settlement agreement, however, neither included subclasses nor allocated relief for state-specific claims. And every word in the 122-page final opinion approving the settlement—and awarding $77.5 million in class attorney’s fees—was written by class counsel. Those lawyers sent that opinion to the district court ex parte. Then, with no notice to or comments from anyone else, the district court entered it on the docket as final without changing a word. The two questions presented are:

1. Whether it violates due process for a district court to adopt verbatim a final opinion on discretionary matters ghostwritten entirely by a prevailing party’s lawyers and submitted to the court ex parte with no notice to opposing parties or chance for them to respond.

2. Whether the class representatives of a settlement class adequately represent class members who hold unique state-specific statutory claims when they agree to a settlement that extinguishes all state-specific claims for no additional settlement value.