Brown v. City Chevrolet, 2009 WL 3485833 (W.D.Mo. Oct. 28, 2009)

This is without a doubt the most boring opinion ever to be assigned to a CAFA Law Blog analyst. In fact, this post was severely late getting to the whip-thrashing blog editor because the analyst couldn’t think of a single interesting thing to say about it. 

Basically, Ashlee R. Brown sued City Chevrolet under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act (“MMPA”) for charging her and other customers a “suspect fee” in the amount of $389. Because the fee was charged to over 2,500 customers, and because punitive damages could round out the requisite $5 million in controversy without violating constitution limitations (3.98 times actual damages), CAFA jurisdiction existed. Oh, and the burden for the removing party was to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the fact finder “might” legally conclude that damages met the requisite amount.

That’s it. The opinion doesn’t even tell us what kind of car Ms. Brown bought or what the “suspect fee” was for. But, since we need to fill in more space on the blog, I suppose we could make up some facts. 

We have been known to do that before. On second thought, perhaps you, our faithful readers, could do the work for us? Just send your stories to cafalawblog@mcglinchey.com with “TBD” in the subject line, and the best (or worst, depending on our mood) will be posted on the blog along with marginally witty commentary. We recognize that some of the hammier hams on the CAFA Law Blog editorial staff may be unable to resist sending in their own stories under fake names, but we’re too lazy to filter them out, so you’ll just have to deal with the extra competition. 

In addition to your name being in lights and the satisfaction that you have published something to the entire world, we will also send to you either one of our world famous CAFA Law Blog T-Shirts (which look great wet), a CAFA Law Blog coffee mug, or a CAFA Law Blog hat.

Good luck, and blog speed.