Supreme Court Declines to Take Up Circuit Split on Whether Courts May Grant Class Certification by Averaging Different Class Member Damages
On April 29, 2024, the Supreme Court issued an Order List indicating that certiorari had been denied in Brinker International, Inc. v. Steinmetz, Docket No. 23-648.
The Eleventh Circuit Brinker Decision
Brinker was a July 2023 Eleventh Circuit decision affirming class certification and holding that class members’ exposure of their payment information to the dark web was sufficient harm to establish standing in a data breach case. The Eleventh Circuit set forth an expansive view of when data breaches can create Article III constitutional standing to support class action certification. The case arose from a 2018 attack on Chili’s restaurant computer systems, after which hackers posted stolen customer credit card data to an online marketplace for stolen information on the dark web. The Eleventh Circuit held that class members who alleged their credit card information was exposed for sale on the dark web had satisfied the “actual misuse” standard for sufficient