Wolf Popper represents the Plaintiffs and putative class of Capital One 360 Savings accountholders in this multidistrict class action litigation concerning Capital One’s alleged deceptive and bad faith conduct regarding the interest rate paid on its 360 Savings accounts. On November 12, 2024, the Court issued orders denying Capital One’s motion to dismiss and motion to strike the Plaintiffs’ jury demand.
In a 106-page decision denying the motion to dismiss, the Court found that Plaintiffs’ claims are not preempted by the National Bank Act; Plaintiffs sufficiently allege claims against Capital One Financial Corp.; Plaintiffs allege a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing against Capital One, N.A. based on Capital One’s dishonesty; choice-of-law does not bar Plaintiffs’ various consumer protection claims; and Plaintiffs’ consumer protection claims (with two exceptions) are sufficiently alleged.
Among other things, the Court found that Plaintiffs alleged that Capital One, N.A. (CONA) “acted dishonestly” when it “created an account that would reasonably cause confusion and then concealed information that would otherwise lead consumers to discover the distinction between the two savings accounts.” Specifically, Plaintiffs plausibly alleged that “CONA acted dishonestly by preventing Plaintiffs from identifying that the advertised Capital One ‘high interest’ savings rate no longer applied to their accounts and making an informed decision about where to maintain their savings.” The Court also found that “CONA’s creation of the similar sounding 360 Performance Savings account and the replacement and removal of any reference to 360 Savings on the website made such comparison virtually impossible without unreasonable efforts, since the website text reasonably misled Plaintiffs into believing that the posted rate continued to apply to their accounts, even though it no longer did.” Therefore, “Plaintiffs could not discover the distinction between the two accounts without unreasonable efforts, and, as rational consumers, they would not have maintained their non-‘high interest’ 360 Savings accounts had they been aware of that distinction.”
The Court also held, in a separate ruling, that Capital One failed to prove that there was any knowing and voluntary waiver of the Plaintiffs’ Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury.