F. Paul Bland

Home Depot v. Jackson

George Jackson never chose to be in court. Citibank sued him over charges on a Home Depot credit card. Jackson answered with class claims against Home Depot and Carolina Water Systems, alleging that a water-treatment promotion used unlawful referral sales and deceptive practices. Citibank later dismissed its claim — leaving Jackson's class action standing in North Carolina state court, and Home Depot trying to pull it into federal court.

Bland argued Jackson's case before the United States Supreme Court. At the lectern, he kept the Court's attention fixed on a single structural point: the civil action is the one Citibank's complaint created. The general removal statute permits removal by "the defendant or the defendants," while the Class Action Fairness Act uses "any defendant." Both provisions, Bland argued, operate within the original action, where the complaint fixes who is plaintiff and who is defendant. A counterclaim cannot manufacture a new removing defendant.

On May 28, 2019, the Court held 5–4 that neither statute authorized Home Depot, a third-party counterclaim defendant, to remove Jackson's class claims from North Carolina court. The majority adopted the action-based reading Bland pressed. The decision preserved Jackson's chosen forum and set a nationwide removal rule for counterclaim defendants.

The forum held, and the case lived on inside it. In 2021, the North Carolina Court of Appeals rejected Home Depot's separate effort to compel arbitration. The trial court certified a multistate class in 2023, and on August 22, 2025, the North Carolina Supreme Court held that the state's referral statute did not require each North Carolina buyer to prove individual inducement, returning the class-certification questions for further proceedings. Those questions remain unresolved — but every one of them is being decided in the forum Bland's Supreme Court argument secured.

Lee v. Intelius

Donovan Lee bought a background report from Intelius. He reached a page bearing only the Intelius name, with an orange button that appeared to complete his purchase. In small, light-colored print, the page purported to enroll him in a seven-day trial for a separate Family Safety Report, followed by a monthly charge — a program run by Adaptive Marketing, a different company identified nowhere on the page.

When consumers challenged the scheme, Adaptive sought to compel arbitration under the contract it claimed that page had formed. Bland argued against enforcement in the Ninth Circuit, and he built the argument from the transaction as the consumer actually lived it: which company the page named, the fact that Lee had already entered his payment information and never reentered a card number, what the orange button promised, where the fine print sat, and whether anything asked Lee to assent to a relationship with a company he had never heard of.

The Ninth Circuit held that Lee had not contracted with Adaptive and had not agreed to arbitrate with it. The button, the payment sequence, the placement of the terms, and the absence of Adaptive's name showed that the supposed new contract had never been formed. The webpage itself — read as a consumer would read it — defeated the arbitration clause.

Chen v. Allstate

Florencio Pacleb alleged that Allstate placed unsolicited automated calls to his mobile phone in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Mid-appeal, Allstate tried to buy the case's ending: it placed $20,000 in escrow, consented to individual injunctive relief, and asked the court to direct payment, enter judgment for Pacleb, and dismiss the action as moot — all before he could seek class certification.

Bland argued for the plaintiffs. The Ninth Circuit held that the escrow deposit was an unaccepted tender, not relief Pacleb had received, and affirmed the denial of Allstate's motion to dismiss. His claim remained live. The panel also refused to direct entry of judgment over Pacleb's objection before he had a fair opportunity to seek class certification.

The stakes ran well past one escrow account. If a tender to a named plaintiff could end a suit before certification, a defendant could dissolve any proposed class by paying only its representative — picking off plaintiffs one by one until no one remained to stand for the rest. Bland's argument preserved the interval in which Pacleb could ask the court to decide certification, keeping that strategy from becoming a template.

Aguayo and State Consumer Protection

In Aguayo v. U.S. Bank, Bland represented a vehicle-loan borrower challenging post-repossession notices under California's Rees-Levering Act. After repossessing and selling the vehicle, the bank pursued Aguayo for the remaining deficiency; Aguayo contended that omissions from the required notices barred that collection. The bank answered that federal banking law displaced California's rules.

Bland argued that the state's notice provisions governed debt collection and lived comfortably alongside the federal regime. The Ninth Circuit agreed, relying on regulatory savings language that preserved state contract and collection law. Because the bank had chosen state-law repossession remedies, it remained subject to the notice requirements attached to that collection process. Aguayo's claim was restored for further proceedings — and a state consumer protection survived a preemption challenge that would have hollowed it out.

Public Justice and Current Practice

Bland joined Public Justice as a staff attorney in 1997. Over nearly three decades he moved through senior legal roles into a decade as executive director, from 2014 through May 2024 — an arc that joined day-to-day appellate craft with responsibility for a national public-interest litigation organization.

In 2024, he joined Berger Montague as a shareholder and co-chair of its Appeals & Complex Briefing Department, returning his full attention to appellate litigation involving forced arbitration, consumer and worker appeals, federal jurisdiction, class procedure, and preemption.

Bland earned his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and his law degree from Harvard Law School. His appellate cases center on the contracts, webpages, procedural records, and statutory text that determine whether consumer and worker claims may proceed to adjudication at all.

Home Depot preserved the state forum; Lee rejected contract formation; Chen kept the named plaintiff's claim alive long enough to seek certification; Aguayo preserved the state-law remedy.