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
The Subcommittee believes that drafting a formal ascertainability requirement is too difficult; it should try nonetheless.
The final topic the Subcommittee has announced it will examine is the possibility of adopting a formal ascertainability requirement. The topic was suggested by several judges of the Third Circuit, who formally requested the Subcommittee consider a formal ascertainability
Year-end lists are funny things. They take a sort-of arbitrary starting and stopping point, and then they cram a bunch of prejudices into a (usually) arbitrary number of items. And then people take them kind of seriously. But they can be handy ways of catching trends one did not see before. And in a year
Cosmetics giant Maybelline markets Superstay 24 lipstick, which is supposed to be more comfortable, withstand heat and humidity, and go 24 hours without needing a transfer. Some customers decided that, despite the advertising, the lipstick did not last a full 24 hours without transfer; so they sued Maybelline claiming that it had violated various
Challenges to ascertainability have become noticeably more popular over the last few years. As a result, defendants will sometimes challenge the class definition even though there are deeper problems with the class. As a recent case shows, however, it is usually worth probing deeper than the definition in one’s arguments.
Steimel v. Minott, No.
This week, we get our yearly reminder not to take the humble numerosity requirement for granted. In Spread Enterprises, Inc. v. First Data Merchant Services Corp., No. 11-CV-4743, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22972 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 22, 2014), the named plaintiff–a prepaid phone minutes company–sued a bank and a credit card payment processor for charging
This week’s case continues a trend I’ve written about before: more courts are declining to certify class actions where they will not be able to ascertain class membership based on the evidence before them.
In Sethavanish v. ZonePerfect Nutrition Co., No. 12-2907-SC, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18600 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 13, 2014), the
2013 did not offer the blockbuster docket in front of the Supreme Court that 2011 did, but that didn’t stop the Court from issuing a number of opinions whose effects will be felt for some time to come. In addition, a number of other courts took bold steps to either support or constrain class
A heavy-metals plant in Alloy, West Virginia provided a foundation for the local economy throughout the 20th century. (Hence the name Alloy.) In the 21st century, it provided the basis for an extensive class action lawsuit–Coleman v. Union Carbide Corp., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140613 (S.D. W. Va. Sep. 30, 2013)–which alleged that decades of substandard emissions