Nationwide Class Claims Under A Single State's Consumer Protection Laws?

A flurry of recent consumer protection cases in California federal courts led to mixed results for defendants attempting to dismiss nationwide class claims based on the state's choice of law rules. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California recently addressed the issue in Azar v. Gateway Genomics, LLC, in which plaintiff brought a putative nationwide class action alleging, inter alia, violations of California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL), False Advertising Law (FAL), and Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) in connection with the purchase of an early detection gender test. The defendant moved to dismiss the nationwide claims, relying on Mazza v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 666 F.3d 581 (9th Cir. 2012) and arguing the claims should be governed by the consumer protection statutes of the relevant jurisdictions. In Mazza, the Ninth Circuit vacated a class certification order after finding California's consumer protection statutes could not be applied to members of a nationwide class who made purchases in jurisdictions with materially different laws. The Southern District acknowledged that California federal courts have disagreed about whether to apply Mazza at the pleading stage, but ultimately determined that it would defer addressing the choice of law issue until class certification. The court emphasized that the plaintiff was herself a California resident who allegedly made a purchase and suffered an injury in the state, and the court was not yet able to determine whether California's choice of law rules would bar all or any of plaintiff's claims.

The Northern District of California came to a similar conclusion in Gerstle v. American Honda Motor Company, in which plaintiffs filed a putative class action that also alleged violations of state consumer protection statutes, this time related to allegedly defective vehicle Bluetooth systems. Defendant also relied on Mazza in moving to dismiss, arguing California's choice of law rules barred the nonresident plaintiffs from relying on California law. The court concluded, however, that it could not conduct a choice of law analysis until some discovery had taken...