Windom v. BorgWarner, Inc., 2014 WL 10290888 (S.D. Miss. Oct. 17, 2014).
In an action brought by clients against their former attorneys, the district court found that, in determining the amount in controversy in a mass action, the punitive damages claims of the putative class cannot be aggregated to meet the jurisdictional requirement and that, ultimately, the propriety of remand comes down to accurately doing the math.
Patsy Windom and 287 other plaintiffs brought a state court action claiming that they were wronged by a group of attorneys in a PCB contamination settlement gone awry. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant attorneys’ secret deals, obfuscation, and misrepresentations enriched the defendants and deprived the plaintiffs of settlement funds.
Specifically, the plaintiffs asserted that the defendants took the $14 million total settlement, placed the funds into a bank which they controlled in Alabama, and wrongfully took their own payout of $6.9 million in a variety of ways contrary to their duties to their clients before disbursing funds to their clients. The plaintiffs brought claims for conversion, conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent inducement, and bad faith. The complaint sought the true value of each plaintiffs’ settlement amount of $8,070.11, costs, expenses, extra-contractual damages, and punitive damages of either more than $1 million or an amount to be determined by the finder of fact. The complaint also sought a preliminary injunction forcing the defendants to return “all” settlement funds to a Mississippi bank for an accounting to be conducted with oversight by a court or the Mississippi Bar.
The defendants removed the case to the District Court claiming that it was a class action and mass action under CAFA. The plaintiffs filed a motion to remand arguing that the defendants’ failed to put forward any evidence showing that the aggregate amount in controversy exceeded $5 million under the “class action” requirement, or...
