Case: Egana v. Blair's Bail Bonds, Inc.
2:17-cv-05899 | U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
Filed Date: June 16, 2017
Closed Date: Jan. 22, 2020
Clearinghouse coding complete
Case Summary
On June 16, 2017, three named individuals who had entered into agreements for the provision of bail bond services filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana against two New Orleans bail bond companies and insurers of bail bonds and an ankle monitor provider ("ankle monitor defendant"). The plaintiffs brought the suit under provisions of the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c)–(d); the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), 15 U.S.C. § 1601; the Louisiana Racketeering Act; Louisiana contract law; and Louisiana state laws prohibiting false imprisonment and conversion. Represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the plaintiffs sought certification of their class, treble damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), compensatory damages, attorneys’ fees, and injunctive and declaratory relief. They claimed that the defendants had charged them fees for bail bonds services that were in excess of what the law allowed, in addition to falsely imprisoning individuals for non-payment. The case was initially assigned to Judge Lance M. Africk and Magistrate Judge Janis van Meerveld. On July 18, 2017 the case was transferred to Judge Jane Triche Milazzo and Magistrate Judge Daniel E. Knowles, III.
The ankle monitor defendant filed a motion to dismiss on September 1, 2017, arguing that they were merely a third-party vendor and had not forced the plaintiff to wear an ankle monitor. They also asserted that they did not provide bail bonds and that the fees charged for ankle monitoring services were not subject to the same restrictions as bail bonds fees.
On September 12, 2017, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint including additional details about the relationship between the bond companies and the ankle monitor defendant, as well as allegations that both parties had employed bounty hunters in order to coerce payments associated with the ankle monitor. The amended complaint explained how the bond companies entered into agreements and the ankle monitor defendants provided the monitoring services and sometimes employed bounty hunters to track down people who had not paid the requisite fees. The plaintiffs also added a claim of usury under Louisiana's consumer credit law against all the defendants. The plaintiffs alleged that by extending credit to the plaintiffs in return for bond services, the defendants were subject to consumer credit laws. They further asserted that the fees charged for ankle monitoring and the interest for bond services were in excess of those allowed under state law for consumer credit sales.
All the defendants moved to dismiss the first amended complaint on October 3, 2017, causing the court to deny as moot the earlier motions to dismiss. The bond insurers argued that they were not creditors and therefore the TILA claim against them couldn’t stand because of the requirement that a defendant be a creditor to be in violation of TILA. They also argued that the RICO claims must fail because the plaintiffs had not alleged that they were a RICO enterprise or conspiracy. They further asserted that the false imprisonment and conversion claims against them must fail because there were no allegations that they had engaged in any false imprisonment or conversion, instead these alleged acts had been conducted by bounty hunters working for the other defendants. They finally argued that the breach of contract and usury claims against them should be dismissed, as there were no allegations that they had been parties to the contract that the plaintiffs had signed, and they had not extended credit of any kind to the plaintiffs.
On February 23, 2018, after the plaintiffs' lawyers allegedly visited a potential class member at their house and left them with a letter that the defendants argued damaged their reputation, the defendants moved to prohibit improper communication between plaintiffs’ counsel and potential class members. On March 22, 2018, the court ordered the plaintiffs not to send written materials to potential class members without first seeking court approval, but dismissed the rest of the defendants’ requested prohibitions as overbroad. The defendants had asked the court to enter an order prohibiting the plaintiffs from visiting potential class members in person or contacting them by telephone without being invited to do so by the potential class member and coercing potential class members to join as named plaintiffs in the existing lawsuit.
The court dismissed the plaintiffs' RICO claims against all defendants, finding that although the plaintiffs sufficiently alleged an association-in-fact enterprise among the defendants, they had not made the required showing of a pattern of racketeering activity or threat of future conduct on June 1, 2018. The court found that all of the acts the plaintiffs alleged violated RICO occurred in relation to a single bail bond for a single individual over a period of only six months, and therefore the plaintiff failed to establish continuity or a threat of continuity. The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ TILA claim against all of the bonding defendants except for the bond company that directly collected the fees. Only the bond company that initially collected the payment could be held liable because according to the court the other defendants could not be considered creditors, a requirement in order to bring a TILA claim.
The court also dismissed the claim of false imprisonment against all defendants except for the bond company that directly employed bounty hunters to detain the plaintiffs. The court held that the claim that the other defendants had acted through a principal/agent relationship could not survive dismissal because the plaintiffs had not alleged any facts that the other defendants had exerted control over the bond company that had employed the bounty hunters to falsely imprison the plaintiff. The court also found that the conversion claim could only stand against the one bond company that had directly taken fees from the plaintiffs. The theory that the rest of the defendants had acted as agents and thus were also liable for conversion could not survive dismissal. Plaintiffs' based their conversion claim on the allegation that the defendants had charged them fees that were above the legal limit that Louisiana state law allowed for fees charged for bond services. The court only allowed the claim against the one bond company that had directly charged the plaintiffs to survive because any fees that the ankle monitoring defendant had charged were separate and the rest of the defendants exerted no control over the one bond company that had charged the allegedly illegal fees. The court held that the violation of contract law claim survived dismissal because the plaintiffs provided evidence of fees charged that were in excess of the legal limit. The court dismissed the claim of usury under Louisiana's consumer credit law against all defendants except for the bond company that had directly charged them the interest rate because only they had charged the plaintiffs fees directly.
On June 21, 2018, the plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint for failure to state a claim on July 12, 2018. The second amended complaint dropped all allegations against one of the bond insurers companies. The plaintiffs' third amended complaint rendered the defendants' motions to dismiss as moot.
On December 5, 2018, the insurer defendants filed a motion for sanctions. They amended the motion and submitted a memorandum in support on January 8, 2019, alleging that the plaintiffs' lawyers had pursued RICO claims without fulfilling their duty to ensure that the allegations were legally and factually supported before they brought the complaint. The defendants argued the RICO allegations lacked basis and that the plaintiffs’ attorneys had not met the elevated burden required to bring a RICO claim.
On December 12, 2018, the plaintiffs filed a third amended complaint. The third amended complaint dropped the RICO claims, as well as the state law racketeering, false imprisonment, and conversion claims against all of the defendants, except for the ankle monitor defendant and one of the bond companies. On May 13, 2019 the court denied the motion for sanctions, finding that the plaintiffs had not acted in bad faith because they had shown that they had reasonably investigated their claims and dismissed those claims when discovery proved them no longer viable.
The ankle monitor defendant moved to dismiss the third amended complaint on December 18, 2018, and the bond companies filed a motion to dismiss on December 21, 2018. The bond companies argued that plaintiffs had not shown a continuous pattern of racketeering activity or a conspiracy. They also argued that the plaintiffs should not be allowed to continue amending their complaint in order to defeat the defendants’ motions to dismiss.
On January 7, 2019 the case was transferred to Magistrate Judge Dana Douglas.
On March 11, 2019, the court denied the motions to dismiss and held that plaintiffs’ RICO and conversion claims survived dismissal. The plaintiffs had now properly alleged a pattern of racketeering activity conducted by the defendants. The amended complaint also supported the allegation that all defendants knew of and agreed to the overall objective of the RICO conspiracy. The conversion claim also survived dismissal because the plaintiffs’ allegation that both defendants had worked together to collect fees in excess of the legal limit sufficiently stated a claim for conversion.
The plaintiffs moved to certify the following proposed classes on May 9, 2019:
- Overcharged Class: all individuals who enter or entered into an agreement with one or more of the defendants as a “principal” or “indemnitor” for the provision of bail bonds services and are or were charged fees in excess of $25 plus 12.5% of the premium in Jefferson Parish or $25 plus 12% of the premium elsewhere in Louisiana
- Deferred Payment Class: all individuals who entered into an agreement with any or all of the defendants as a “principal” or “indemnitor” for the provision of bail bonds services and signed an agreement to defer payment of any balance owed on the bail bonding fee and pay over time.
- TILA Subclass: all members of the deferred payment class who agreed to pay said balance in more than four installments or as to whom the bail bonding fee included finance charges.
- Kidnapped Subclass: all member of the deferred payment class, where the principal was seized and held against his or her will by Blair’s or A2i, or at Blair’s or A2i’s direction for alleged non-payment of the balance owed on the bonding fee
- Kidnapped Principal Subclass: all principals in the deferred payment class who were seized and held against their will by Blair’s or A2i, or at Blair’s or A2i’s direction for alleged non-payment of the balance owed on the bail bonding fee.
- Kidnapped Principal with Ankle Monitor Subclass: all principals in the deferred payment class who were seized and held against their will by Blair’s or A2i, or at Blair’s or A2i’s direction for alleged non-payment of the balance owed on the bail bonding fee and were required to wear an ankle monitor.
- Unlawful Debt Subclass: all members of the deferred payment class, where the principal and indemnitors are or were required to pay a fee for an ankle monitor or to pay a previous balance with Blair’s.
- Ankle Monitor Subclass: all members of the deferred payment class, where the principal and indemnitors are or were required to pay a fee for an ankle monitor.
- Surrendered Subclass: all members of the deferred payment class where the principal was surrendered to jail, where payments made toward the premium were not refunded, and where no statement of surrender was filed indicating that they were surrendered because of one of the following reasons: change of address, concealment, leaving the jurisdiction without permission, failure to appear in court, withdrawal of an indemnitor from his obligation on the bond, or conviction of a felony.
- Kidnapped Principal Subclass: all principals in the deferred payment class who were seized and held against their will by Blair’s or A2i, or at Blair’s or A2i’s direction for alleged non-payment of the balance owed on the bail bonding fee.
On June 3, 2019 the case was transferred to Judge Wendy B. Vitter.
The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on December 10, 2019. The plaintiffs also asked the court to grant summary judgment on three of their claims.
The parties reached a settlement agreement on January 22, 2020 and the Magistrate advised the district court to close the case as the parties had reached a settlement. The terms of the settlement included an undisclosed amount paid by the defendants over a period of three years. Although the court recorded the settlement conference, the amount the defendants agreed to pay was redacted. The defendant bond company also agreed to draft new contracts with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center in order to ensure that they protected consumers’ rights, complied with state and federal law, and did not charge above the lawful level of fees designated by the state.
The bail bond insurer defendants filed a motion for sanctions against plaintiffs’ counsel on May 26, 2020, alleging that plaintiffs’ attorneys had misled the court in order to evade sanctions. They alleged that the plaintiffs’ attorneys had fabricated discovery in order to sustain its claims against the defendants. On October 27, 2020, the court denied this motion and found that sanctions were not appropriate because plaintiffs’ attorneys had not drawn inferences from discovery that were unreasonable and any mistakes were not made in bad faith.
The court granted the bail companies and insurers' motion to dismiss and all claims against them were dismissed with prejudice because of the finalizing of the settlement agreement on October 19, 2020. On November 24, 2020 the court did the same for the ankle monitor defendant. As of November 8, 2022, this case is closed.
Summary Authors
Rhea Sharma (10/8/2022)
People
For PACER's information on parties and their attorneys, see: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6076834/parties/egana-v-blairs-bail-bonds-inc/
Brooke, Samuel J. (Louisiana)
Becker, Walter Francis (Louisiana)
Bizal, Gary William (Louisiana)
Blanchard, Charles P. (Louisiana)
Breton, Melissa (Louisiana)
Davis, Danielle Elizabeth (Louisiana)
Delbaum, Charles Marshall (Louisiana)
Drake, Eleanor Michelle (Louisiana)
Eisler, Robert Gerard (Louisiana)
Esades, Vincent J. (Louisiana)
Hyslip, Jeffrey Scott (Louisiana)
London, Michael A. (Louisiana)
McGlothlin, Lauren B. (Louisiana)
Pordy, Hope Allison (Louisiana)
Potter, Clara Joyce (Louisiana)
Prakash, Anna Purna (Louisiana)
Sawhney, Neil Kumar (Louisiana)
Documents in the Clearinghouse
Docket
See docket on RECAP: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6076834/egana-v-blairs-bail-bonds-inc/
Last updated July 2, 2026, 4:39 a.m.
Docket for: Egana v. Blair's Bail Bonds, Inc.
Case Details
State / Territory:
Case Type(s):
Key Dates
Filing Date: June 16, 2017
Closing Date: Jan. 22, 2020
Case Ongoing: No
Plaintiffs
Plaintiff Description:
All individuals who entered into an agreement with the defendants as a principal or indemnitor for the provision of bail bond services.
Plaintiff Type(s):
Attorney Organizations:
Public Interest Lawyer: Yes
Filed Pro Se: No
Class Action Sought: Yes
Class Action Outcome: Mooted before ruling
Defendants
Private Entity/Person
A2i
Bankers
Blair's Bail Bonds
New Orleans Bail Bonds, L.L.C.
Defendant Type(s):
Case Details
Causes of Action:
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961 et seq.
Other Dockets:
Eastern District of Louisiana 2:17-cv-05899
Available Documents:
Outcome
Prevailing Party: Plaintiff OR Mixed
Relief Granted:
Injunction / Injunctive-like Settlement
Source of Relief:
Form of Settlement:
Amount Defendant Pays: redacted from court transcript
Issues
General/Misc.:
Case Summary of Egana v. Blair's Bail Bonds, Inc., Civil Rights Litig. Clearinghouse, https://clearinghouse.net/case/43510/ (last updated 10/8/2022).