This settlement agreement comes after a year of litigation and contentious disputes fought in district and appellate courts. Both courts have found the arguments on each side, to have been excessive.
In 2016, three nonprofit groups, the National Consumer Law Center and Alliance for Justice, Alliance for Justice, and the National Veterans Legal Services Program, filed a class action lawsuit in D.C. federal court, alleging PACER was charging excessive fees for the public’s use of the PACER database, and that under the E-Government Act of 2002, these charges exceeded the amount permitted by law.
This case is filed as National Veterans Legal Services Program et al. v. the U.S., case number 1:16-CV-00745, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The class members are represented by attorneys Jonathan E. Taylor and Deepak Gupta of Gupta Wessler PLLC, William H. Narwold, Charlotte E. Loper, and Meghan S.B. Oliver of Motley Rice LLC.
The government is represented by attorneys Jeremy S. Simon, Robert Aaron Caplen, and William Mark Nebeker of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and Brian J. Field of Schaerr Jaffe LLP.
