Class Action

Class Action Defense Cases–County of Nassau v. Hotels.Com: Second Circuit Remands Class Action For Consideration In First Instance Of Propriety Of Class Action Treatment Is Appropriate

By Michael J. Hassen

Class Action Alleging Failure to Online Hotel Room Reseller to Pay Proper Occupancy Taxes, Dismissed by District Court for Failure of County to Comply with Administrative Process for Assessing and Collecting Taxes, Remanded for District Court Consideration of Whether Class Action Certification is Appropriate Second Circuit Holds

Plaintiff County of Nassau filed a putative class action against Hotels.Com alleging failure to pay the proper hotel occupancy taxes. County of Nassau v. Hotels.Com, LP, 577 F.3d 89, 90-91 (2d Cir. 2009). According to the allegations underlying the class action complaint, “defendants are online sellers and/or resellers of hotel rooms who negotiate discounted room rates with hotels and then resell the rooms at higher retail rates.” Id., at 91. The State of New York authorizes counties to impose a tax “upon persons occupying hotel or motel rooms in such county.” Id. (citation omitted). The class action alleged that defendant improperly calculated the tax owed to the County in that defendant calculated the taxes owed “based on the discounted price that it negotiated with the hotels and accordingly remitting too little to the County.” Id. The class action complaint sought to represent a “state-wide class of all New York cities, counties and other local governmental entities that have imposed hotel taxes since March 1, 1995.” Id. The County filed the class action in federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), id. Defense attorneys moved to dismiss the class action on the ground that the County failed to comply “with administrative processes for assessing and collecting taxes, thus exhausting its administrative remedies, prior to commencing its action to recover those taxes”; the district court granted the motion and dismissed the class action. Id., at 90-91. The Second Circuit reversed without addressing the administrative process issue, remanding the matter “for consideration of a different jurisdictional concern, which we raised nostra sponte at oral argument: whether the complaint meets the requirements for class certification under Fed.R.Civ.P. 23, without which both we and the District Court would lack jurisdiction over the suit as presently constituted.” Id., at 91.

The Second Circuit explained, Because the case presents no federal questions, the only statutory jurisdictional grant that might allow us to consider the case with its current parties is CAFA, which grants district courts original jurisdiction over class action suits on certain conditions, among them that ‘the number of members of all proposed plaintiff classes in the aggregate’ be no less than one hundred.” Id., at 91-92 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(5)(B)). The parties had stipulated that the requirements of CAFA had been met, but as parties cannot stipulate to federal court jurisdiction the Second Circuit, at oral argument, “asked nostra sponte whether they are in fact satisfied, as the District Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case if they were not.” Id., at 92. The County stated in a post-argument letter brief that there were more than 100 local government entities owed hotel taxes under the theory of the complaint, id. The Second Circuit noted that this would satisfy the numerosity requirement under CAFA, but that “the allegation raises the distinct possibility that questions common to the members of the class do not predominate over those affecting only individual members” because “[a]ssuming that each locality imposes its hotel tax as Nassau does, under its own tax law, the cause of action for each member of the plaintiff class might well arise under a law unique to that class member.” Id. Accordingly, the Circuit Court remanded the class action to the district court to “consider in the first instance” whether class certification is appropriate. Id., at 92-93.

Full post as published by Class Action Defense Blog on September 24, 2009 (boomark / email).