4/27/26 — No IEEPA Refunds Have Yet Been Issued, However, Consumer Class Actions Are Already Here

Two putative class actions are now pending against FedEx in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee (where FedEx is headquartered) with the parties moving toward consolidating them into a single case.

Anastopoulo v. FedEx Corporation (W.D. Tenn. # 2:26-02334) was originally filed in South Carolina on February 20 and transferred to the Western District of Tennessee in late March. It alleges FedEx breached its shipping contracts by charging fees tied to unlawful IEEPA tariffs and then failing to refund those charges. Then Reiser v. Federal Express Corporation and FedEx Logistics (W.D. Tenn. # 2:26-02410) was filed shortly later, in Miami on February 27 and transferred to the same Tennessee court in early April. The Reiser case also alleges that FedEx billed customers for IEEPA duties while "merely facilitating" payment of those duties to CBP. Both complaints argue FedEx was unjustly enriched because it positioned itself as importer of record to keep all IEEPA refunds which were ultimately recovered from the government.

Chief Judge Sheryl Lipman has given FedEx until June 1 to respond and has stated that "no further extensions will be granted." The parties told the court that they "reasonably anticipate filing a motion to consolidate” and want to "realize the efficiencies of a single, centralized action." Similar potential exposures exists for other couriers, carriers, and brokers who may have acted as an importer of record on IEEPA shipments.

As class actions, these cases are built around consumers and small shippers who are unable to sustain individual litigation themselves. As such, class action attorneys tend to resolve such cases via settlements agreements which disproportionately benefit class counsel via fee awards, with individual class members typically seeing only minor recoveries. Parties with a larger individual claims can avoid having these rights adjudicated and settled within a class action, but doing so requires separately preserving a timely cause of action through in independent litigation action. With FedEx's response due June 1 and consolidation already in motion, the window to do so may be a narrow one.