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David T. Biderman

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David Biderman, a partner in Perkins Coie's San Francisco and Los Angeles offices, focuses his practice on mass tort litigation and consumer class actions. He heads the firm's Mass Tort and Consumer Litigation group. He has represented a wide variety of companies in state and federal courts in California for 30 years.

On consumer class actions, David represents packaged food companies, coffee companies, dairy companies, footwear companies and others whose nutritional or health claims have been challenged. He also has represented search engines and other online companies. He has a record of favorable results for clients. He successfully tried a major consumer fraud class action on behalf of one of the world’s major search engines in a case involving online gambling advertisements. For that same client, he negotiated a favorable settlement of a class action challenging its online advertising pricing. He represented a major coffee retailer in defeating a class action on standing grounds. He also has litigated pre-emption defenses arising out of food labeling and obtained a dismissal for a client whose nutritional statements were challenged.

For fifteen years, David managed the firm’s full-service product liability team responsible for defending over 1,000 toxic tort cases pending in Los Angeles and Northern California state courts. These cases entailed ongoing trial activity at various levels for several trials set each month. The highly experienced and well-coordinated team has handled thousands of asbestos toxic tort cases for a variety of clients, including FORTUNE 500 companies from such industries as consumer products, aerospace manufacturing, household goods, dry cleaning and industries that generate electromagnetic fields, such as electric utilities and operators of wireless communications systems.

 

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In Hunstein v. Preferred Collection and Management Services, Inc., 994 F.3d 1341 (11th. Cir. 2021), the Eleventh Circuit held that a debt collector’s communication of a consumer’s personal information to a third party print vendor violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s prohibition on third party communications in connection with debt collection under 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(b).

Hunstein will likely require major operational changes for many loan servicers. At a minimum, loan servicers who qualify as a “debt collector” under the FDCPA should rethink how to utilize third party vendors for such basic operations as printing and higher functions such as loss mitigation. Although it is theoretically possible to continue using such vendors without communicating the personal information of the consumer, the efficiencies of using such vendors will be diminished. The short term solution to avoid exposure under Hunstein will likely entail bringing such services in house—a major shift in industry practices.
Continue Reading 11th Circuit Issues FDCPA Decision That Could Dramatically Impact Mortgage Servicers Operations

While the COVID-19 pandemic affected nearly every industry last year, the consumer finance industry faced unique challenges in the wake of economic changes and government response. In this report Perkins Coie offers an analysis of the past year’s most noteworthy regulatory developments and litigation outcomes in the mortgage lending and servicing industry. We review the…

Mortgage service companies (and their lawyers) got a big boost on March 20, 2019, when the Supreme Court delivered a unanimous opinion in Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, holding that a business engaged in no more than nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings is not a “debt collector” under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA or Act), except for the limited purpose of §1692f(6). This decision will prevent needless and unfair litigation by borrowers seeking to stall collection efforts.

The petitioner in the case (who purchased his home in 2007 and defaulted approximately two years later) argued that the law firm hired by the creditor bank to carry out a nonjudicial foreclosure failed to comply with the FDCPA, which requires a debt collector to cease collection efforts until it obtains and delivers verification of the debt to the debtor.Continue Reading Justices Rule that Businesses Engaged in Nonjudicial Foreclosure Proceedings are Not “Debt Collectors” under the FDCPA