BMG Direct Marketing, Inc. v. Peake

in which Chief Justice JEFFERSON, Justice HECHT, Justice BRISTER, Justice MEDINA, Justice GREEN, Justice JOHNSON, and Justice WILLETT joined.

In this class-action case, the trial court certified a class of music club members who paid allegedly illegal late fees for failing to timely pay for compact discs in accordance with the terms of a membership agreement. The parties dispute whether the customers’ claims are subject to the voluntary-payment rule, which has sometimes been successfully invoked to bar restitution of money that has been voluntarily paid with full knowledge of all the facts and…