On July 7, 2015, Circuit Court Judge William Haury of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, Florida entered a significant order in the action entitled Golf Clubs Away LLC v. Hostway Corporation, et al., Case No. 09-29596-13 (the “Hostway case”).  The Court’s Order Granting Class Certification, granted the plaintiff’s motion for class certification on its claims for violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (“FDUTPA”), breach of good faith and fair dealing, and unjust enrichment.

The Hostway case involves allegations that the defendant, a company providing email services, failed to notify customers that its servers had been compromised due to hacking and spamming activity.  As a result, major Internet Service Providers like Yahoo and AOL blacklisted Hostway customers’ email addresses associated with the compromised servers.  The blacklisting meant that Hostway customers’ email transmissions were blocked, obstructing the personal and business communications of these customers.

The Court’s Order allows this action to proceed on a classwide basis and made the following findings of fact (among others):  that members of the class experienced interruptions in their ability to send and receive emails because of the blacklisting of defendants’ servers; that the defendants did not notify the class that their emails had been blocked; and that plaintiff and the class paid for uninterrupted email service but did not receive it.

The Court certified the following class:

All customers who directly or indirectly subscribed to defendants’ e-mail services, including email services provided by defendants’ predecessors, affiliates, subsidiaries and/or parents, and whose email accounts utilized Hostway’s shared servers located in Florida that were “blacklisted” at any time from November 1, 2008, through and including March 31, 2009.

The Court also appointed the law firms of Saxena White, P.A. and Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP as Co-Lead Counsel in the action.

A copy of the release with additional details related to the case can be found here. A copy of the Notice of Pendency of Class Action and Exclusion Request form can be found here. A copy of the Order Granting Class Certification can be found here.