Update #3 (May 17, 2011): The Mooney class action was filed in U.S. District Court (District of Minnesota) in February, 2006. Anyone who wants to track the long hard road of nationwide class action litigation should read the string of posts below and U.S. District Court Judge Ann D. Montgomery’s decision, issued last week, in which Defendant Allianz sought (unsuccessfully) to broaden the application of favorable rulings to put all of the cases against based on similar allegations across the country finally to rest.
Update #2 (February 1, 2011): If you don’t succeed, try, try again, and again, and again, and again, and again…. (?) A victorious defendant might have other ideas…(Allianz moves for an injunction to halt second, third, fourth, fifth, etc., “bites at the apple.”) The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Ann D. Montgomery (D. Minn.).
(February 1, 2010): Minnesota Litigator reported a serious defeat for plaintiffs’ class action lawyers in the Mooney v. Allianz case late last year. Plaintiffs’ counsel sought to salvage some benefit from this long battle by seeking injunctive relief which, if awarded, would have given them attorneys’ fees. (The jury had found that defendant Allianz “use[d] a misrepresentation or deceptive practice in the course of selling its two-tiered annuities” and “intend[ed] that others would rely on the misrepresentation or deceptive practice,” but that none of the class members were “harmed as a direct result of the misrepresentation or deceptive practice.”) Plaintiffs had two theories, both of which the Court (U.S. District Court Judge Ann Montgomery (D. Minn.)) rejected.
Defendant Allianz’s motion to amend the judgment was granted although the Court, in a footnote (ftn. 6), chided Allianz:
The proposals submitted by Allianz…strike the Court as ironic as they would appear to run afoul of the very argument advanced by Allianz that a judgment must be a ‘self-contained document,’ distinct from any opinion or memorandum, and may not incorporate, recite, or refer to other case proceedings.
Appeal would seem likely given the amount invested by plaintiffs, the likely costs of appeal, and the potential benefit if plaintiffs were to succeed in reversing some or all of their setbacks.