Class action practitioners have tried hard to develop litigation strategies in light of the California Supreme Court’s developing jurisprudence regarding the standing requirements of the state’s unfair competition law, Business & Professions Code §17200, et seq., and false advertising law, Business & Professions Code §17500, et seq., specifically in the wake of the court’s opinions in In re Tobacco II Cases, 09 C.D.O.S. 5993 and Kwikset v. Super. Ct. (Benson), 11 C.D.O.S. 1260. While these cases purport to settle, or at least further define, the UCL’s standing requirement, the parallel body of law in federal cases continues to develop in response to these California opinions. Similarly hoping to resolve and clarify the standing issues in federal court, recent decisions by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals have instead created further uncertainty and placed even greater challenges on complex litigators defending class actions where the “injury-in-fact” requirement of the UCL is at issue.
Following Tobacco II and Kwikset, many defendants argued that notwithstanding the California Supreme Court’s decisions, Article III of the U.S. Constitution stood as independent grounds for dismissal in federal court; and further, that each and every putative class member must have Article III standing to proceed. The Ninth Circuit has offered varying answers on these questions. For example, in Degelmann v. Advanced Med. Optics, 11 C.D.O.S. 12392, and Stearns v. Ticketmaster, 11 C.D.O.S. 10640, the court appears to have taken a soft view of the Article III requirements. More recently, however, in Mazza v. American Honda Motor, 12 C.D.O.S. 522, the Ninth Circuit ordered a class decertified based on a lack of uniform standing amongst the class. A review of these three recent opinions suggests that the state of the law of standing, as it relates to UCL claims brought in federal court, remains in flux.
UCL Standing Requirements
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