Category Archives Commonality

Some may say that daily print newspapers are a dying breed.  Not Plaintiffs in O’Shaughnessy v. Cypress Media, L.L.C., No. 4:13-CV-0947-DGK, 2015 WL 4197789, (W.D. Mo. July 13, 2015), who attempted to certify a class action for their newspaper delivery service cut short. But Plaintiffs’ hopes for a certified class certainly died after a recent order issued by Judge Kays reporting on the numerous ways in which Plaintiffs failed to prove that their class should be certified. Cypress publishes three newspapers, the Kansas City Star, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the Belleville News-Democrat, in Missouri, Texas, and Illinois, respectively, and has hundreds of thousands of subscribers.  As part of its newspaper delivery, Cypress would deliver premium editions for holidays, special events, or elections.  As the name premium denotes, those editions were charged at a higher rate.  For some subscribers, Cypress would charge for the premium addition by shortening the subscriber’s…