In an unpublished opinion, a panel of three judges claimed that a federal court in California made a mistake when it was found that Louis Vuitton had not been able to prove that the company might be facing $5 million in claims. The complaint filed was for $1,000 for each violation of the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act, which allows a court to fine$250 for the initial violation and then $1,000 for every violation thereafter.
On Thursday, the Ninth Circuit decided to reverse a court ruling from a lower lever regarding a motion filed by Louis Vuitton North America Inc. The motion involved the company asking to move the class action lawsuit that claims that it recorded personal info illegally when processing customers’ payments via credit cards to federal court, according to Law360.
Louis Vuitton attempted to move the suit to a federal court in California in July. The case was remanded back to state court by U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz after claiming the money involved in the lawsuit did not surpass the limit within the jurisdiction of $5 million. Lorenz also ruled that the allegations nor the evidence offered by Louis Vuitton that any member of any class was allowed more than one violation at a time.
“Because the amount in controversy could be as much as $1,000 for each subsequent violation and it is undisputed that there were substantially in excess of 5,000 credit card transactions, the preponderance of evidence shows that the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million,” the panel said.
The panel for the Ninth Circuit includes Judges William A. Fletcher, Barry G. Silverman and Kim McLane Wardlaw.
The class in the lawsuit includes the customers from California whose personal info was recorded if they purchased a product over the past year. This purchasing period included more than 5,000 transactions. Louis Vuitton orally argued that if the company had made over 5,001 transactions using credit cards, then they could be charged $1,000 per credit card transaction. This would then lead to damages exceeding $5 million.
Louis Vitton is being represented by the law firm of Winston & Strawn LLP by lawyers Nicolas Andreas Jampol and Stephen R. Smerek.
The Class Action Fairness Act requires that there be at least 100 people of the class in the lawsuit, which Louis Vuitton failed to show, according to the plaintiffs. The panel did say that the company had over 5,000 transactions for the period in question, which means there would be at least 100 separate customers who used credit cards during that time.
