The Supreme Court recently held that a defendant’s unaccepted settlement offer does not moot a plaintiff’s case. Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 136 S. Ct. 663, 666 (2016). The Court, however, refused to “decide whether the result would be different if a defendant deposits the full amount of plaintiff’s individual claim in an account payable to the plaintiff and the court then enters judgment for the plaintiff in that amount.” Id. at 672.
This article examines how the Court might treat a situation where the defendant does just that, and analyzes the likely effects of employing such a strategy. It concludes that the court would likely moot the named plaintiff’s claims in the above scenario. Whether the entire class action could be stopped, however, is less clear.