Syed v. M-I, LLC

Case Updates

The Chamber filed an amicus brief supporting a petition for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc in a Ninth Circuit case involving the requirements of Article III standing in a class action brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit concluded that a plaintiff established Article III standing when he merely alleged that an employer violated FCRA by disclosing that it would obtain a background report about employees as part of a package of forms rather than on a separate sheet of paper. The Chamber’s brief argued that this allegation of a bare statutory violation did not plausibly show any real world harm to the plaintiff as required by the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo v. Robins, and that the panel’s acceptance of these allegations conflicted with the approach taken by the majority of courts to have addressed comparable standing questions since Spokeo. The brief also noted that the panel had decided this important question without the benefit of any briefing following the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, which made panel rehearing or rehearing en banc particularly appropriate.

Andrew J. Pincus, Archis A. Parasharami, and Daniel E. Jones of Mayer Brown represented the U.S. Chamber as co-counsel to the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center in this case.