The primary purpose of our state and federal class action laws is to provide litigants whose grievances share common questions of law and fact with an economically viable means of addressing their needs in court. Increasingly, corporate conduct has the purpose or effect of causing economic harm to large numbers of people and businesses. In many situations, the victims of such practices do not have the awareness or the resources to hire separate counsel to redress their grievances, but rather must depend on the class action mechanism. The court systems of our state and country benefit from the consolidation of claims and the economies of scale which class actions afford. Often, it is only through the class action claims that corporate wrongdoers are deprived of their ill-gotten gains in victimizing consumers. Sheftall & Torres have significant experience in litigating all aspects of class action litigation, including issues of federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA).

SETTLEMENT: After-Market Auto Repair Parts Class Action. Sheftall & Torres co-counseled this class action against a major national insurer with another leading Florida firm. The complaint in federal court alleged that the insurance company had breached its insurance policies by prescribing the use of inferior, after-market auto parts known as "Taiwan tin" for repairs, instead of parts made by the original equipment manufacturers (OEM), or to their authorized specifications. The nationwide class claims were settled with federal district court approval. The total value of the settlement was approximately $8.4 million.

SETTLEMENT: Auto Insurance Class Actions. Scott Sheftall and Brian Torres have settled over 25 separate class action cases in state and federal courts on behalf of consumers and medical providers throughout the State of Florida against auto insurers. In each of these cases, the presiding courts certified Sheftall & Torres as lead class counsel. The firm succeeded in recovering 100% of the unpaid statutory interest on late-paid Personal Injury Protection (PIP) claims owed to the plaintiff classes, totaling over $6.4 million from the insurers. The Third District Court of Appeal pronounced these cases "the quintessential scenario for class action treatment" in Colonial Penn Ins. Co. v. Magnetic Imaging Sys. I, Ltd., 694 So. 2d 852 (3d DCA 1997).