Truck Ins. Exch. v. CE Design Ltd., No. 11-3731 (7th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseCE is a small Chicago-area engineering firm that has filed at least 150 class action suits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In this case, CE sued Cy’s Crab House on behalf of a class of junk-fax recipients. Truck is the liability carrier for the Cy’s Crab House restaurants and provided a defense under a reservation of rights. The case was certified as a class action, and went to trial. In the middle of trial, without notifying the insurer, Cy’s settled with the class, for policy limits. State-court coverage litigation ensued. The district court approved the final settlement and entered final judgment. Less than a month later, the Seventh Circuit issued a decision casting doubt on the conduct of class counsel. In light of that decision, Truck moved to intervene to reopen the judgment, challenge the settlement, and seek class decertification based on misconduct by class counsel. Instead of filing a conditional appeal, Truck asked the district court for a 14-day extension of the time to appeal. Ultimately the court denied intervention as untimely. Truck Insurance filed a notice purporting to appeal both the order denying intervention and the final judgment. The Seventh Circuit held that it had jurisdiction to review the order denying intervention, but could not grant any meaningful relief because it lacked jurisdiction to review the final judgment.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on October 1, 2013.
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