In a case that is being defended by the team at Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, a District Court judge in the Southern District of Florida has granted a defendant’s motion to transfer a Hunstein-related class action to the Middle District of Florida — where the defendant is already facing a similar suit — thereby getting out of an area where judges have been reluctant to stay these types of cases pending the outcome of the petition for an en banc rehearing of the original Hunstein case.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Cohen v. GC Services Limited Partnership can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff argued against having the case transferred, claiming that the differences between this case and the one against the defendant in the Middle District were not similar enough to warrant a transfer. In particular, the plaintiff argued that the case in the Middle District — Frangione v. GC Services Limited Partnership — is a nationwide class action, whereas this case only sought to include plaintiffs who were living in Florida, and because this case included a claim that the defendant violated Section 1692f of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, while the Frangione case did not.
Ultimately, those differences did not meet the threshold of “compelling circumstances” needed to keep the case in the Southern District, ruled Judge Jose E. Martinez.
The plaintiff also noted that the Frangione case has been stayed pending the outcome of the en banc petition, but Judge Martinez was not moved to deny the defendant’s motion to transfer the case. “That a district judge in this District has denied a stay premised on the same Eleventh Circuit case does not constitute a compelling circumstance,” he wrote.
This case is one of hundreds of cases that have been filed in the wake of the ruling out of the Eleventh Circuit in Hunstein v. Preferred Management & Collection Services
