Arbitration ‘Actually Supports’ Consolidating T-Mobile Class Actions: Plaintiff

Transfer of the now-17 data breach class actions against T-Mobile for coordination or consolidation in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington remains “the most appropriate choice” for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict litigation, lawyers for plaintiff Stephan Clark, the petitioner for the transfer, told the panel in a reply brief Thursday (MDL Case No. 3073). Of the nine responses filed to Clark’s petition (see 2303170021), all but defendant T-Mobile’s response “are in favor of coordination or consolidation,” it said. The majority of the responses support Clark’s request for transfer to the Western District of Washington, it said. The second most requested transferee district is the Western District of Missouri, with four filings supporting that district as a first or second choice, it said. T-Mobile identifies “no material difference” between the 2021 T-Mobile data breach class actions it previously supported consolidating and the current wave of T-Mobile data breach class actions it now opposes consolidating, said the reply. The one “purported difference” to which T-Mobile points is that it intends to move to compel arbitration in each of the current pending class actions, it said. But motions to compel were also at play in consolidating the 2021 class actions, it said. “Contrary to T-Mobile’s current arguments, the issue of arbitration actually supports consolidating the class actions,” it said. That the panel “has routinely centralized cases involving arbitration rebuts T-Mobile’s assertion that centralization conflicts with federal policy favoring arbitration,” it said.