In an order issued on June 27, 2011, the Northern District of California granted the Firm’s motion to compel arbitration of a putative class action against our clients, Fidelity National Financial, Inc. and its title insurance operating companies, as well as several other title insurance companies. The complaint alleged that the defendants violated antitrust laws by conspiring to set title insurance rates in California and violated the California Unfair Competition Law (the “UCL”) by including the costs of alleged illegal referral payments in title insurance rates.
On November 6, 2009, the court dismissed the plaintiffs’ antitrust claims with prejudice but allowed the UCL claim to go forward. In May 2011, following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T v. Concepcion, the Firm, on behalf of all defendants, moved to compel arbitration. The plaintiffs argued that the defendants waived their right to arbitration by litigating the case in court for three years. We argued that a motion to compel arbitration prior to Concepcion would have been futile and that the plaintiffs suffered no prejudice from any alleged delay in seeking arbitration. The court agreed on both issues and granted the motion.
This case is one of a series of cases that were commenced in February 2008 against title insurance companies in twelve states. The California case was the last remaining case pending in a district court. The other cases have been dismissed, and several of those dismissals have been affirmed on appeal.
The team representing the Fidelity companies in these cases include Barry Ostrager, Kevin Arquit, Patrick Shilling, Allyson Rothberg, Devin Ryan, Michelle Hertz, Michael Freedman, Greg Szewczyk, Hema Shenoi, Tina Geraghty, Christopher Judge, Dana Jupiter, Ilana Levin, Omari Mason, Colman McCarthy, Mindy Jeng, Courtney Rogerson, Noah Stern, and Michael Tarpinian, with invaluable paralegal assistance from Steven Wilson.