NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Peloton has failed to convince a federal judge to toss what threatens to become a long-running class action.
New York federal judge Lewis Liman on Aug. 11 ruled against the company’s motion to dismiss the fourth complaint in the case, despite the company arguing the new plaintiffs named on it admitted they didn’t see the claims at issue when purchasing their bikes.
The case, which was filed three years ago and now can start to progress past the motion-to-dismiss phase, alleges Peloton advertised an ever-growing library of digital content but lost more than half its song catalogue. Attorneys at DiCello Levitt Gutzler in New York and Keller Lenkner in Chicago are pursuing the case.
Having trouble finding plaintiffs to push claims for a class of New York customers under New York law, those lawyers instituted a search that resulted in the latest plaintiffs – Eric Passman and Ishmael Alvarado – Peloton argued earlier this year.
Plaintiff lawyers intend to eventually appeal the denial of a nationwide class.
“The operative question is whether a plaintiff suffered an injury because of a defendant’s misrepresentation; it is not whether that injury was tied to plaintiff’s reliance on the misrepresentation,” Judge Liman wrote in allowing a class of those who have standing in New York to continue.
“Plaintiffs have alleged that Defendant made misrepresentations that would have misled a reasonable consumer, that those misrepresentations were consumer-facing and had broad impact, and that as a result of those widespread misrepresentations that mislead reasonable consumers, they paid higher costs.”
Peloton slashed its song catalogue after the National Music Publishers Association sent it a cease-and-desist order that resulted in a $150 million lawsuit by several of the group’s members.