A team of Foley litigators filed an amicus brief on behalf of several clients in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins. The issue before the Court is whether Congress can confer Article III standing on a plaintiff who suffers no real-world injury, potentially opening the doors for class action suits for a mere violation of a federal statute. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff, companies that aggregate and own significant amounts of data may be subject to increased class actions.
Foley filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Coalition of Sensible Public Records Access (CSPRA), an association of companies including Experian, Polk, Black Knight Financial and RELX (Lexis Nexis) among others, that reinforced the notion that actual harm must be shown to move forward with class action lawsuits.
Foley noted in the brief that CSPRA members and other companies face an additional concern because the information in which those companies transact is government-created public records, whether a bankruptcy, lien or divorce document. The companies report those documents as is, yet the companies have no control over the content of the information.
Foley further represented with the amicus brief a number of mortgage and real estate industry clients who have suffered litigation due to this lax standing requirement in certain courts.