Every once in a while a plaintiff’s attorney will do the unthinkable.

They will win certification in a TCPA class action and then walk it back– agreeing to accept an individual resolution instead of a classwide deal.

The reasons for this vary– usually it is an ability to pay issue– but the procedure for decertifying a class is always fraught with peril.

This is true because the Court has to approve a decertification and, in doing so, may question the motives and rationale of the plaintiff’s lawyers in requesting that relief.

In Aley v. Lightfire Partners, 2025 WL 2210145 (N.D.N.Y. Aug. 4, 2025) the parties reached an individual resolution of a TCPA case after certification. But the settlement was conditioned on the court’s agreement to set aside the certification order.

In analyzing the issue the court firat determined class members would not be harmed by the decertification because class notice had not yet been sent out– important point. As a result the claims of class members were tolled during the proceeding– meaning the statute of limitations on their claims was paused so they would not be injured by the dismissal.

More importantly, the court credited the plaintiff’s statements that Defendant would not be able to pay a classwide settlement:

The parties have agreed, on the record, that Defendant’s demonstrated financial status presents an obstacle to the efficient and just resolution of this dispute on behalf of the class. Indeed, the “prospect of a bankrupt judgment debtor down at the end of the road does not satisfy anyone involved in the use of class action procedures…” Because “it is unlikely that the Defendants could satisfy a sizeable judgment on behalf of a class …. a class action is no longer the ‘superior … method for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.’ ”

So it looks like the plaintiff’s move here was one designed to get something out of the case recognizing the defendant was too small to satisfy a classwide resolution.

Notice that this result happened far too late in the case though. Nobody wins here. The Plaintiff’s lawyers will end up getting a smallish sum after working all the way through certification. The class gets nothing. The plaintiff presumably gets some small sum. And, of course, the defendant had to pay fees for years just to wind up paying an individual setlement in the end that results in very little protection from future suits.

Then again, the class was decertified and that is a nice win for the defendant in and of itself.

But the lesson here is clear– if the company is too small to pay for a classwide resolution it makes no sense for a plaintiff’s attorney to chase it in a class action. The sooner those cases are resolved–or better yet, never filed– the better.