Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit affirmed class certification of a UCL "unfair" prong claim in Lozano v. AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., ___ F.3d ___ (9th Cir. Sept. 20, 2007). I have not had time to review the decision in detail, but I did notice this paragraph on restitution, which is particularly interesting in light of the recent Shersher decision:
The next question we address is whether these injuries are recoverable under the UCL. The only types of relief available under the UCL actions are injunctive and restorative. Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17203; see also Cel-Tech, 83 Cal. Rptr. 2d at 560. While restoring Lozano's overage payments, if any, fits squarely within the restorative context of the UCL, we question whether restoring Lozano's "reserved" minutes falls into this category. Restitution in the UCL context, however, includes restoring money or property that was not necessarily in the plaintiff's possession. The California Supreme Court has stated that the concept of restoration or restitution, as used in the UCL, is not limited only to the return of money or property that was once in the possession of that person. Instead, restitution is broad enough to allow a plaintiff to recover money or property in which he or she has a vested interest. See Juarez v. Arcadia Fin., Ltd., 61 Cal. Rptr. 3d 382, 400 (Cal. Ct. App. 2007) (citing Korea Supply Co. v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 131 Cal. Rptr. 2d 29, 42 (2003)). Here, Lozano has a vested interest in 400 free anytime minutes. Due to out-of-cycle billing, however, Lozano found it necessary to reserve, and therefore lose, a certain number of those minutes each billing period. Accordingly, we find that Lozano has properly stated an injury that he did not receive the full value of his contract with AWS due to its alleged failure to disclose out-of-cycle billing, and that this injury is redressable under the UCL. See Daghlian v. DeVry Univ., Inc., 461 F. Supp. 2d 1121, 1155 (C.D. Cal. 2006) (accepting plaintiff's theory that he suffered injury under the UCL because he paid thousands of dollars of tuition to defendant university and "did not receive what he had bargained for" due to its alleged unfair business practices).
Slip op. at 12772. The court also declined to employ the third, intermediate formulation of "unfair" adopted by the Court of Appeal in Camacho v. Automobile Club of Southern California, 142 Cal.App.4th 1394 (2006). Instead, it held that the district court did not err by applying the pre-Cel-Tech formulation set forth in South Bay Chevrolet v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 72 Cal.App.4th 861 (1999) (and other cases). Slip op. at 12775-77.
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