Tax Class Action vs. Google Adds 9 Plaintiffs, Moves to Relate Another Case
Plaintiff and Illinois resident Mary Smith filed a consolidated class action (docket 5:23-cv-03527) Monday, following her July fraud action (see 2307170033) against Google in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose. On Friday, she filed an administrative motion to sever and relate Hunt v. Meta Platforms, citing Local Rule 3-12(a) concerning related actions in the same district.
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In her August privacy class action, Smith alleged consumers have been transmitting sensitive financial information to Google when they file their taxes online on H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer (see 2308280005). Smith alleges Google Analytics’ tracking pixel, embedded in the JavaScript of online tax preparation websites, sent “massive amounts” of her private tax return information such as income, refund amounts, filing status and scholarship information to Google, without her consent, “to improve its ad business and other business tools.”
Monday's consolidated complaint added plaintiffs Malissa Adams, San Bernardino, California; Tracylyn Patterson, Brevard County, Florida; Cary Goldberg, Broward County, Florida; Tyisha Sheppeard, Henry County, Georgia; Teresa Wright, Sangamon County, Illinois; Rheazene Taylor, Cook County, Illinois; Tiffany Layton, Westchester County, New York; Jamila Armstrong, Richland County, South Carolina; and Monica Townsend, Harris County, Texas. Smith struck claims of invasion of privacy and intrusion upon seclusion in the consolidated complaint and added violations of the Florida Security of Communications Act, Florida statutes, the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, the Texas Criminal Wiretap Act and Texas' penal code.
In Smith’s Friday motion to sever and relate Hunt v. Meta Platforms, counsel noted plaintiffs in the In Re Meta Pixel Tax Filing Cases and Smith v. Google asked the court to sever claims in Hunt so claims against Meta can be related and consolidated with In re Meta, and claims against Google can be related and consolidated with Smith v. Google. Citing an “unusual situation,” Smith’s counsel said the motion is being filed in both cases because the newly filed Hunt complaint meets the definition of a related case with respect to two other cases that are unrelated.
The Meta and Google class actions both arise from allegations that when class members used certain tax filing websites, their filing information was “unlawfully shared” with either Google or Meta, said the motion. The Hunt matter that’s the subject of the motion is a belated tagalong action that combines the allegations against Meta and Google in the In Re Meta and Google complaints, but Hunt adds H&R Block as a defendant and asserts claims of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO).
If the Hunt plaintiff had filed separate complaints against Meta and Google, each case would be subject to relation and consolidation with the previously filed In re Meta and Google actions, said the motion. By combining the defendants and allegations against them in one matter, Hunt may “evade relation and consolidation, and create the problem that Local Rule 3-12 is intended to prevent: namely, ‘an unduly burdensome duplication of labor and expense or conflicting results if the cases are conducted before different Judges,’” the motion said. The court “can and should” sever Hunt’s claims vs. Meta so they can be consolidated with In re Meta, and it should sever the Hunt claims against Google so they can be consolidated with Google, it said.
Before filing Smith’s motion, Hunt plaintiffs indicated they intended to avoid severance and consolidation by amending their complaint to assert only claims of racketeering and for violations of federal laws on government disclosure and access to tax filing information, while scrapping the wiretapping claims alleged in their original complaint, said Smith’s motion. But that amendment “resolves nothing,” because neither the judge’s consolidation order in In re Meta nor relation under Local Rule 3-12 depends on whether two actions assert identical causes of action, Smith’s motion said.
The most serious claims and key facts in dispute in Hunt “continue to be largely identical to those in In re Meta and Google,” the motion said. “Notwithstanding the recent amendment in Hunt, the matter continues to concern substantially the same events as those at issue in In re Meta and Google, and continues to create the likelihood of 'an unduly burdensome duplication of labor and expense or conflicting results if the cases are conducted before different Judges,'” it said.