Manjunath A. Gokare, P.C. et al v. Federal Express Corp., Case No. 2:11-cv-02131-JTF-cgc (W.D. Tenn. 2011)
Dec 08, 2011OUTCOME: Our team was able to negotiate a $21 million settlement on behalf of a nationwide class, which included an agreement by Fed Ex to change the way it determines the applicability of its residential surcharge.
Every day Federal Express makes deliveries to both commercial and residential addresses throughout the nation. When the address is a business, Fed Ex has one charge; when the address turns out to be a ... residence, Fed Ex is entitled under its shipping contract to add a “surcharge” of $3.50, the theory being that residences present more difficult deliveries than do office buildings and other businesses. In this class action, our clients, a group of law firms that frequently sent packages to U.S. governmental agencies, noticed that they were routinely charged the additional residential surcharge despite the fact that their deliveries never went to home addresses. When they made formal complaints to Fed Ex, they were told no refund or credit would be given. Our firm and our Atlanta co-counsel investigated this matter before filing suit and found that Fed Ex routinely overcharged for deliveries to commercial addresses. Our clients filed suit and, naturally, were met with major opposition. The discovery process in this case was massive, involving over 100,000 electronically stored documents and millions of courier transactions. Our diligence paid off when we discovered a large number of e-mails in which Fed Ex’s own employees were highly critical of the surcharging.
