Cy pres is an occasionally useful tool.  But limiting or eliminating it would clarify the underlying principles of the class action.   

In the last five years, the use of cy pres relief in settlements has become particularly controversial.  Various appellate courts have expressed suspicion about the use of cy pres in questionable settlements.  Even Justice

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

A brief one this week, involving a settlement that did not reach final approval. Dremak v. Iovate Health Sci. Group, Inc., No. 09md2087, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165225 (S.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2013) involved an attempted settlement of personal injury class and labeling class actions involving products with hydroxycut [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxycut]. The proposed settlement involved

At this point, I’m well aware that I tend to sound like an old crank when reviewing class action scholarship; much of it repeats the same old stuff, predicts the imminent demise of the class action in its current form, and looks at the same Supreme Court cases instead of digging into where the real

 Not right away, but it’s thrown down the gauntlet. In denying certiorari in Marek v Lane, Chief Justice Roberts took the time to issue an accompanying opinion. Marek v. Lane, No. 13-136, 2013 U.S. LEXIS 7772 (Nov. 4, 2013). In it, the Chief Justice takes the time to rehearse the facts behind the

 Judge Posner is often considered to be a pro-defense jurist, particularly in the area of class actions. Lately, he’s been proving himself to be more independent-minded than that. First, he allowed certification of a washing machine class, justifying certification despite some outcome-determinative individualized issues because predominance is a matter of "efficiency," and should not be