Vizio, Plaintiffs Move To Stay Viewer-Tracking Complaints Pending Cases' Consolidation

With 15 complaints filed against Vizio in seven different U.S. District Courts over privacy implications of the company’s “smart interactivity” viewer-tracking feature (see 1512060005), Vizio joined with plaintiffs to ask the courts to temporarily stay the complaints until a federal panel can rule whether to consolidate the cases into a single class action. An interim stay would promote the chances of multidistrict litigation (MDL) consolidation or coordination of the cases “by conserving judicial resources, preventing inconsistent pretrial rulings, and promoting the interest of justice,” Vizio and the plaintiffs said in a stipulation filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, one of the seven venues where the cases are being heard. The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is expected to rule on the pending MDL applications “within a reasonable amount of time,” it said. While Vizio and most of the plaintiffs agree the cases should be transferred to the Santa Ana court, two plaintiffs have asked for the complaints to be transferred to federal courts in Indiana or Arkansas, the stipulation said. All lawyers on both sides agree the complaints “concern the same subject matter and should be transferred to a single district” but disagree on “the ultimate location and judge” to which they should be assigned, the stipulation said.