Sometimes settlement with a putative class of nationwide consumers is the best option for resolution. However, since the initial ruling of the Ninth Circuit in In re Hyundai & Kia Fuel Econ. Litig., the mechanism to go about doing so has been in flux. On June 6, 2019, the full en banc Ninth Circuit
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Snap Removals – An Often Unconsidered Path to Federal Court
Any good litigator can tell you that removal is proper where there is diversity of citizenship and the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000. Diversity generally requires that no defendant be a citizen of the same state as the plaintiff. By way of example, consider a lawsuit filed by Paul, a Pennsylvania citizen, in Pennsylvania state…
Seventh Circuit Allies With FCRA Class Action Plaintiffs on Spokeo Grounds.
Below, Richmond-based litigators Bryan A. Fratkin and Heidi E. Siegmund examine the Seventh Circuit’s recent holding that an employment applicant’s missed opportunity to address a background check constitutes sufficient injury to confer standing.
On August 29, the Seventh Circuit reentered the multi-front fray that has broken out among lower courts in the wake of the…
Ninth Circuit Holds Collective Claims Made on Behalf of ERISA Plans Survive Motion to Compel Arbitration
In a published decision issued yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that collective claims for alleged breaches of fiduciary duty under ERISA were not subject to the arbitration agreements in plaintiff employees’ employment contracts. Instead, since those claims were brought for the benefit of the ERISA plans in which the…
Recap of the 30th National Forum on Consumer Finance Class Actions and Government Enforcement
LA-based commercial litigator Arsen Kourinian has provided us with some timely notes from last week’s consumer finance litigation conference in Chicago:
On July 16 and 17, 2018, the American Conference Institute (ACI) hosted its 30th National Forum on Consumer Finance Class Actions and Government Enforcement in Chicago. The 2018 conference was well attended by…
Supreme Court Rejects Tolling for Copycat Class Actions
McGuireWoods Fintech industry team leader David Reidy and appellate litigator Jonathan Urick bring us this succinct analysis of the Supreme Court’s hotly anticipated decision on the doctrine of “equitable tolling” in class actions:
Class-action plaintiffs cannot toll the statute of limitations indefinitely by filing copycat class actions until certification sticks, the U.S. Supreme Court held…
Supreme Court Upholds Employee Class-/Collective-Action Waivers under Federal Arbitration Act
We’ve been monitoring the appellate battles over the enforceability of class- and collective-action waivers in the employment context since September 2016, when we pondered whether circuit splits would land the issue in the Supreme Court. Since then, our colleagues in the Labor and Employment practice at McGuireWoods have supplied interim reports on the Supreme…
More on In re Hyundai & Kia
Just a brief update on the 9th Circuit’s most controversial class-action case of the year. As expected, the proponents of the settlement that was rejected have appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit en banc.
What is slightly less expected is the alliance of interests that have filed amicus briefs. As Law360 reports,…
Has the Ninth Circuit Overhauled Nationwide Settlement Classes?
Earlier this week, in In re Hyundai & Kia Fuel Efficiency Litig., the Ninth Circuit vacated a nationwide class action settlement, ruling that the lower court had abused its discretion by not considering whether the variations in the consumer-protection laws of the fifty states might predominate over common issues in the case. The ruling…
Ascertainability in 2017
2017 was an unusually eventful year for lawyers who track the ascertainability requirement, which had, for the last five or so years, become a staple argument for class action defendants. Here are the top issues that class action litigators had to contend with.
Circuit split on administrative feasibility.
This year, both the Second and…