- Filing. Published in U.S. District Court of Northern District of California on December 28, 2020 (Case no. 14-cv-02346-JCS; related case no 14-cv-05337-JCS).
- Background. Follow-up action to the Wit remedies phase. Defendants bring motion to stay remedies pending appeal.
- Holding. Judge Joseph C. Spero denied Defendant’s motion to delay the remedies pending the court appeal.
- Analysis. Among other assertions, Defendant argued that there are “serious questions with respect to the Court’s treatment of causation and its application of the abuse of discretion standard”. The Defendant further contended that United “will suffer irreparable harm if it is required to reprocess class members’ claims before the appeal is decided as reprocessing will cost millions of dollars that will not be recoverable and require it to make changes to its business in order to hire and train the additional employees required to conduct the reprocessing”.
In rejecting the irreparable injury claim, the Judge notes that United estimated the administrative cost to reprocess the claims would be an estimated $30 million in comparison to the Defendant’s record setting second quarter 2020 profit of close to $7 billion, The Court concluded that a stay would be inappropriate because of the substantial harm that some class members would likely experience.