L'Occitane defeats mass arbitration bid in fight with consumer law firm
15/04/2024 18:30
By David Thomas
April 15 (Reuters) - French skincare company L'Occitane
has fended off mass arbitration claims involving thousands of
its purported customers, though its fraud lawsuit against a
plaintiffs' law firm for allegedly "manufacturing" the claims
appears poised to fizzle.
U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson on Friday rejected a
motion by law firm Zimmerman Reed to compel L'Occitane into
arbitration with 3,144 individual consumers. The judge ruled
that the company was not subject to arbitration agreements with
the consumers simply because they might have visited
L'Occitane's website.
Anderson said even if he agreed that an arbitration
agreement could exist simply through the act of accessing a
website, Zimmerman Reed's clients did not show any evidence they
had visited L'Occitane pages.
"By failing to establish that they visited the website,
claimants have, even under their own theory, failed to meet
their burden to establish an agreement to arbitrate between
L'Occitane and any of the 3,144 claimants, let alone all of
them," Anderson said.
L'Occitane sued Zimmerman Reed and its clients in February,
claiming the law firm was manufacturing mass arbitration claims
against it under the California Invasion of Privacy Act by
having people visit the company's website and claim their
privacy was violated by third-party tracking software. Zimmerman
Reed denied any wrongdoing.
L'Occitane claimed that Zimmerman Reed and its clients
violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act through its
CIPA arbitration "shakedown" attempt. Anderson dismissed that
claim against Zimmerman Reed in a separate ruling on Friday,
finding that the law does not apply to publicly available
websites like L'Occitane's.
With L'Occitane's computer fraud claim dismissed and
Zimmerman Reed's arbitration motion defeated, Anderson on Friday
questioned whether the rest of the lawsuit should be dismissed
as well, including L'Occitane's computer fraud claims against
Zimmerman Reed's 3,144 individual clients.
He gave the parties until April 22 to show cause on why the
other claims should not be dismissed as well.
A spokesperson for L'Occitane declined to comment beyond the
company's legal filings. Zimmerman Reed's managing partners --
June Pineda Hoidal, Caleb Marker and J. Gordon Rudd, Jr. -- did
not respond to multiple requests for comment.
L'Occitane's lawsuit also sought an injunction against the
firm and an order that would declare parts of CIPA
unconstitutional. The California law prohibits covertly
eavesdropping or recording telephone conversations and includes
a private right of action.
The case is L'Occitane v. Zimmerman Reed, et al., U.S.
District Court for the Central District of California,
2:24-cv-01103
For L'Occitane: Allan Anderson, Adam Bowser and Andrea
Gumushian, of ArentFox Schiff
For Zimmerman Reed: Chase Scolnick, Jennifer Keller and Jay
Barron, of Keller Anderle, and Caleb Market and Jeff Westerman,
of Zimmerman Reed
(Reporting by David Thomas)
((D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com;))