Today’s case, Thatcher v. Hanover Insurance Group (8th Cir. 2011) is another short one that nonetheless raises important issues for class action defendants. Allen Thatcher (or, rather, his attorneys) filed a class-action complaint in Arkansas state court against his insurance company. He alleged that the defendants did not pay insureds properly under the terms of
CAFA
Cost of Injunctive Relief in CAFA – Keeling v. Esurance Ins. Co
Today’s opinion is a short one from the Seventh Circuit, but a very useful one for defendants nonetheless. Keeling v. Esurance Insurance Company was a class action filed against automobile insurer Esurance (created of the popular advertising icon Erin Esurance) that alleged that it sold a series worthless insurance policies in Illinois. Esurance removed…
Gaming CAFA Doesn’t Pay, At Least Not in the Eighth Circuit
Sometimes, the most interesting cases, from both a strategic and an equities standpoint, are hidden in the weeds of a statute. For example, take the lengthily named case Graphic Communications Local 1B Health & Welfare Fund "A" v. CVS Caremark Corp., 636 F.3d 971 (2011).
In Graphic Communications, the plaintiffs originally sued the defendants…
The Importance of a Consistent Story – Doe v. Match.com
Today’s opinion, Doe v. Match.com, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56567 (C.D. Cal. May 25, 2011), involves a plaintiff and a defendant who made the same mistake: prizing an immediate tactical move over the internal consistency of their positions. For the plaintiff, the inconsistency came from an attempt to turn an unquestionably horrific individual incident…
11th Circuit Reverses Itself on CAFA – Cappuccitti v DIrecTV II
As I’ve written before, it’s rare for something to qualify as breaking news in the world of class action practice. This, however, qualifies. This afternoon, the three-judge panel that had ruled that the Class Action Fairness Act requires at least one class member to have suffered $75,000 in damages–thus turning itself into an…
Revisiting “Aggregation and Its Discontents”
On Monday, I reported on the passing of Vanderbilt Professor Richard Nagareda. Given the widespread recognition of his contributions to studying aggregated litigation, it seemed appropriate to revisit one of his better articles: Aggregation and Its Discontents: Class Settlement Pressure, Class-Wide Arbitration, and CAFA, which originally appeared in the Columbia Law Review in…
CAFA Opinion Encourages Forum-Shopping – Cappuccitti v. DirecTV
Followers of this blog have probably noted (and probably with some chagrin) that I rarely discuss just-released cases, because I’m more interested in what we can learn about the strategies in a case than breaking the latest legal news. This case, though, is different, because last week the Eleventh Circuit released an opinion on jurisdiction…
The Data Breach Class Action
For the most part, this blog has focused on tactics that defendants may use to oppose class certification. But another important part of class action defense is being alert to new trends in class-action practice. And, in the last few years, a new type of class action has arisen that is worth looking at more…
Grand Strategy and Class Actions
What is grand strategy? It’s a term that’s usually thrown around in military, security, and foreign policy circles. As the military historian Liddell Hart defined it in his classic book Strategy:
[T]he role of grand strategy – higher strategy – is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band
…
The Dangers Of Settling By Reverse Auction: Figueroa v. Sharper Image
Figueroa v. Sharper Image (S.D. Fla. 2007) provides a case study in how a rushed class settlement can go wrong. The settlement drew objections almost immediately, invited interference from lawyers pursuing competing class actions, witnessed intervention from various state Attorneys General, and even earned a judicial rebuke. What happened?
First, some background. The plaintiffs…