My regular Tuesday post will be up tomorrow (Classic Cases – looking at Kirkpatrick v. JC Bradford Co.). But Russell Jackson has an excellent writeup of a recent Sixth Circuit opinion that affirms a motion to strike class allegations based on state law variations.
Go. Read.
Readers of this blog know that I’ve been an early (and ardent) advocate of challenging poorly-conceived class actions as early as possible. And, during the last three to four years, the motion to strike class allegations has (with good reason) become a popular tactic among defense counsel. And, several months ago, we got one…
Paul Karlsgodt over at ClassActionBlawg.com has an outstanding post up that outlines his thinking on when (and how) a defendant should challenge the certifiability of a class. He explicitly recognizes that
[T]here is also an art to defending class actions, and part of the art is in knowing whether to challenge class certification at each
…
I’ve written before about the the growing defense tactic of filing early challenges to class certification. Last week, Law360 reporter Leigh Kamping-Carder reported on the trend. (Subscription required.) While she interviews a plaintiff’s attorney (who wonders if everyone went to the same seminar), the most interesting part is the interviews with defense…
When a defendant is faced with a class action complaint, sometimes the best strategy appears to be to settle quickly, before having to engage in costly litigation or burdensome discovery. But, as readers of this blog know, that strategy is not always as straightforward as it first seems. In today’s case, we have another…
Commonality is rarely the subject of much discussion in class certification. The plaintiff often treats it as a perfunctory hurdle, subsumed into the more difficult questions of predominance (under Rule 23(b)(3)) or cohesiveness (under Rule 23(b)(2)). But, much like numerosity, commonality is a requirement that may reward careful scrutiny when a defendant opposes class certification.…
A little more than six months ago, when I first began this blog, I posted about a tactic that was growing in popularity: filing a motion to deny certification rather than waiting for the plaintiff to file a motion to certify a class. Which raises the question, when is a motion to deny certification appropriate…
