Dakus v. Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij, N.V.

The federal district court for the Southern District of New York imposed sanctions on an attorney who represented a consumer in a class action alleging that the Dutch airline KLM misrepresented its commitment to achieving carbon emissions targets. The court found that the attorney acted in bad faith by continuing to pursue the plaintiff’s claims after receiving “clear notice” in KLM’s motion to dismiss that central allegations regarding the plaintiff’s reliance on the airline’s representations were false. The court awarded KLM excess costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees incurred after the motion to dismiss was filed. The court also imposed a $1,000 fine.

The federal district court for the Southern District of New York granted the Dutch airline KLM’s motion to dismiss a putative class action claiming that KLM misled consumers who purchased airline tickets in reliance on allegedly “misleading promises of its commitment to adhere to the carbon emissions targets defined by the historic Paris Climate Agreement.” The plaintiff asserted causes of action for violations of New York and other states’ consumer fraud statutes, as well as claims for breach of contract and unjust enrichment. The court found that the plaintiff’s allegations regarding her injury—that she would not have purchased her airline ticket, or would not have paid as much for the ticket, absent KLM’s alleged misrepresentations—appeared not to be true based on evidentiary submissions from KLM that indicated that a third-party organization, not the plaintiff, had purchased the ticket and that the plaintiff could not have known which airline the organization would select for her travel. The court therefore found that the plaintiff lacked standing. The court further found that given the “demonstrably false allegations” in the complaint, sanctions against plaintiff’s counsel could be warranted pursuant to Rule 11(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The court granted the plaintiff leave to amend, “provided she has a good faith basis for doing so.”