In Re Text Messaging Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 1997, Case No. 08-7082 (N.D. Ill. August 13, 2009).

In In re Text Messaging Antitrust Litig., the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division found the home state controversy exception applied and told the parties BCNU. Can’t figure that one out? Ask your nine year old.

Am I RMOCC (running my own cuckoo clock)? Maybe, but here’s the deal. I’m funny. I mean, really funny. Sometimes people take one look at me and LOL before I’ve even said a word. (If I have to translate LOL for you, you’ve just been living under a rock and even The Blog can’t help you.) I am so beyond LOL, or even LMAO. I am more in the league of ROTFLUTS (rolling on the floor laughing unable to speak). But when our editors assigned this case to me, I just was not inspired. Seriously, I had nothing. I was AAK (asleep at keyboard), not to be confused with AFK (away from keyboard)) on this one. 

WTH could I do to make this post interesting? I asked myself, WWAKD (what would Ashton Kutcher do)? WWM9YOD (what would my 9 year old do)? I needed inspiration….and then I found it – in the underlying class action, the plaintiffs allege the defendants, “conspired to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the price of text messaging services sold in the United States in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.” 

So, then I decided that before anyone raises the price of my text messaging plan, I’d write the entire post in text message format! Since my 9 year old wasn’t available, I just needed a little help from some texting dictionaries (TKS and TIA to http://www.txtdrop.com/abbreviations.php and http://ezinearticles.com/?Text-Message-Abbreviations—SMS-Dictionary-Examples&id=534837 ) and I was well on my way. 

And a post all in text message might help The Blog become cool enough to close that 1,812,805 twitter follower lead Ashton Kutcher has on us and finally beat the ***** out of Ashton Kutcher! People, that’s 5 of those little asterisks, NOT 4 of them. Get your minds out of the gutter. 

Remember in our 5/20/09 post, we noted that Ashton Kutcher claimed victory over CNN being the first to have 1 million followers on Twitter.   If you don’t remember, click here.  We asked for your help in passing up Kutcher, who was then at 1,812,820 while we were at 15. Thanks to our loyal fans we are beating the ***** out of Ashton in the Twitter battle with our 20 followers.

AAR (at any rate), here is my case summary in a nutshell, or a text message, or whatever.

BDN (big damn number, as in $5,000,000 is a big damn number and the matter in controversy did exceed it) 

BCNU (be seeing you, as in go back to state court anyway, the home state controversy exception applies and the case is remanded). 

Oh, IOIWTS (if only it were that simple) You see, I have a POS (parent over shoulder). Yes, the editors.* And the editors unreasonably require us analysts to actually say something more than eight letters about the case in our case summary. WTH? So, here is the 411 for the POS — 

This case was one of over a dozen suits in which the plaintiffs alleged wrongdoing with respect to the amounts charged for text messages. Although the Court had jurisdiction pursuant to the CAFA (the BDN was present), the Court found it had to remand because the home state controversy exception applied.

The only defendant was a Kansas resident and the plaintiffs “defined the putative class in such a way as to leave little doubt that at least two-thirds of the class members are Kansas citizens.” The defendant argued the Court should consider the citizenship of all the plaintiffs in all the text messaging antitrust class action lawsuits containing similar allegations, not just the plaintiffs in the particular case at issue. 

The Court declined to so interpret the language of 28 USC 1332(d)(4)(B), noting that as the local controversy exception contains a specific requirement that courts consider similar class actions, but the home state exception contains no such instruction, the existence of other lawsuits was not a consideration in applying the home state controversy exception. So, only the citizenship of the plaintiffs in the instant case was considered, the home state controversy exception was met and BCNU, back to Kansas state court!

That’s it. But, hey, DQMOT(don’t quote me on this). IANAL(I am not a lawyer). Well, I  really am a lawyer but SICNR (sorry I could not resist) the opportunity to use that abbreviation. SOMY (sick of me yet)? Look, you can read the case if you want, but YRYOCC (you’re running your own cuckoo clock) if you do since I did all the work for you. 

I leave you with this one last thought. The courts should really follow my lead and write their opinions in a text message.  Talk about judicial economy. Kitson could have been summed up in four letters – RTFM (read the f***king manual)! (Hush. “freaking” fits there) (See our 6/15/09 post Landmark Decision! Court finds CAFA "required reading for all who engage in class-action litigation."  Kitson v. Bank of Edwardsville)   I’m just saying. The possibilities are endless:

BLNT – better luck next time

SMHID – scratching my head in disbelief

SSINF- so stupid it’s not funny

GIAR – give it a rest

GIGO – garbage in, garbage out

WOMBAT – waste of brains, money and time

TNSTAAFL – there’s no such thing as a free lunch

And, finally,

WTcaFa? — I could explain but GTG (got to go) GTRM (going to read mail) — fan mail in my case. If you really can’t figure it out, ask Ashton. Though I would be SIS (shocked into silence) if Ashton knows what CAFA is unless of course he attended the University of Pennsylvania Law Review Symposium with Sarah Palin. (See our 11/3/08 post.)   IIRC (if I remember correctly), he does prefer older women.

TAFN (that’s all for now)