Status of California KeyBank Litigation and KeyBank Settlements

Here is the latest word from our friends Andrew August and Kevin Rooney at Pinnacle Law Group regarding the status of the proposed class action case that they filed in California against KeyBank:


"As we mentioned last week, the District Court granted KeyBank's Motion to Dismiss. While this was extremely disappointing, the District Court went out of its way to spend two-thirds of its written opinion holding that we adequately alleged KeyBank engaged in unlawful and unfair acts and practices under California’s Unfair Competition Law by aiding and abetting Silver State’s violation of the Holder Rule, a federal consumer protection regulation. However, the Judge felt constrained to dismiss the entire case on the ground of federal conflict preemption.

On April 21, 2010 we filed a Notice of Appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal of the District Court's ruling granting KeyBank's Motion to Dismiss. We and several amicus curiae ("friends of the court") with whom we will be working are confident this part of the decision will be reversed and KeyBank will be held to answer at minimum for its aiding and abetting Silver State's unlawful conduct."


For my former SSH student clients with KeyBank loans, I continue to work client by client to settle the cases of clients with relatively low flight hours who have received reasonable offers to settle, or who I can get reasonable offers for. For those clients that have 175 flight hours or more and are currently being offered nothing off the principal of their loans and 50% off the interest from the loan start date to the date of settlement, I continue to fight on and hope that a better offer or a better litigation result will come.