Northwestern Law professor Martin Redish should be very familiar to readers of this blog. I’ve covered his work before, from his constitutional challenges to the class action through his critique of the cy pres remedy to his surprising turn to what looked like a “trust model” of the class action last year. Professor Redish’s work
entity theory
The Ten Most Significant Class Action Cases of 2013
By The Editors on
Posted in Certification
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…
CAFA Jurisdiction and the Entity Theory – Standard Fire Ins Co v. Knowles
By The Editors on
Posted in Motions Practice
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Standard Fire Insurance v. Knowles. The question the Court faced in this case was whether a plaintiff may avoid removal of a class action under CAFA by stipulating that the case is worth less than $5 million, the statutory amount-in-controversy requirement.
The Knowles opinion–which was…
Spherical Cows, Can Openers, and Classwide Injury
By The Editors on
Posted in Certification
There’s an old joke about a physicist asked to help increase milk production at a dairy farm. He begins by assuming a spherical cow.
There’s another old joke about a group of academics stranded on a desert island with a can of food. As they try to figure out how to get the food…
Book Review – Wholesale Justice
By The Editors on
Posted in Strategy
Last month, I received a flurry of email from various people who wanted to point me towards Mark Herrrman’s column on Above the Law, "Torpedoing Class Actions." In that column, Herrmann reviewed Martin Redish’s 2009 book Wholesale Justice, which argues that class actions are an unconstitutional delegation of state power to private…
Supreme Court Hands Loss to Bayer, But Good Opinion to Defendants
By The Editors on
Posted in Motions Practice
Earlier today, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Smith v. Bayer Corp. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Kagan, it held that a federal court cannot enjoin a state court from re-litigating a class action that had been denied certification in federal court. In doing so, it barred a tactic that…
Rhetoric – Entities, Entrepreneurs, and Rogues
By The Editors on
Posted in Lawyers
As I’ve discussed before, there are few areas of law as polarized as class actions. The plaintiff and defense bars in class-action law rarely agree on anything, from the proper scope of Rule 23 to what a class action is in the first place. And I’m not the only one to have noticed this divide. …