From TCPAland.com comes the identification of a new trend: individuals which had originally filed suit against a company in state court, only to have the defendant seek to have the case removed to federal court — ideally to use the lack of Article III standing as a means of having the case dismissed — are seeking to have the case moved back to state court because the defendant can not establish the plaintiffs had Article III standing.
If it all sounds rather circuitous, it is, but as TCPAland.com notes, it’s an interesting way for plaintiffs to “flip the script” on defendants and a potential “harbinger of things to come.”
TCPAland noted the development in one case — Blanchard v. Fluent LLC — in which a plaintiff filed suit against a defendant, alleging a violation of an Unfair Competition Law in California. The defendant had the case moved to the District Court for the Northern District of California, only to have the plaintiffs seek to have the case moved back to state court because the defendants could not establish an Article III violation by the plaintiffs.
For now, the lawyers at Womble Bond Dickinson who run TCPAland.com say that the strategy may only be available to cases that were originally filed in state court and then moved to federal court.
But if this trend starts bleeding into cases originally filed in federal court, we might see dismissals based on lack of Article III standing doing more harm than good for defendants.
