Securities class actions are interesting for many reasons. They involve large stakes, and so they also attract outsized personalities. They are also more strictly regulated than other class actions. And, as a result, they often lead to unusual tactics for class action litigation. For example, as Professor Mark Gideon points out in his article
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Tall People and Class Actions
By The Editors on
Posted in Scholarship
April Fool’s–a day that one cannot trust what one reads on the Web, is fortunately over. So, please rest assured that Rutgers law student Brandon Riley’s note We’re Cramped as Hell, and We Won’t Take It Anymore: Plotting a Class Action Disability Claim on Behalf of the Very Tall against Air Carriers for a Failure …
An Introductory History of the Class Action – What Goes Around Comes Around
By The Editors on
Posted in Scholarship
Loyola of Los Angeles professor Georgene Vairo wrote a piece called What Goes Around, Comes Around: From the Rector of Barkway to Knowles for the Review of Litigation.
Professor Vairo’s piece makes two overall arguments: (1) the class action is a political, rather than procedural, problem; and (2) the recurring debates over use of…
Law, Facts, & Hostile Judges
By The Editors on
Posted in Scholarship, Strategy
As it turns out, Chicago poet and journalist Carl Sandburg is one of–if not the–first person to be credited with an old piece of advice for lawyers:
If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound
…
Agencies as Gatekeepers – Implications for Superiority
By The Editors on
Posted in Scholarship
One of the perennial questions at class certification (at least under Rule 23(b)(3)) is whether the class is superior to other forms of adjudication. Defendants will often raise individual lawsuits as a viable alternative, but, in cases involving heavily regulated industries, they may also invoke the possibility of allowing a regulatory agency to address the…
Class Action Discovery & the Proportionality Log
By The Editors on
Posted in Discovery, Scholarship
Professor Suja Thomas (of Oddball Cases fame) has jumped into the debate over proportionality in discovery with a post over at Prawfsblawg. The debate, prompted by the upcoming amendments to FRCP 26, asks whether a party should be able to withhold discovery on the grounds that it is disproportionate to the needs (and the…
Analyzing Securities Motions to Dismiss
By The Editors on
Posted in Motions Practice, Scholarship
University of Idaho law professor Wendy Gerwick Couture has published an interesting working paper analyzing a data set of dismissal opinions from securities fraud class actions: Around the World of Securities Fraud in 80 Motions to Dismiss. The paper is a quick read, distilling her data into eight major observations.
Among her most interesting…
Class Actions as ADR
By The Editors on
Posted in Scholarship
Houston law professor D. Theodore Rave’s new paper Settlement, ADR, & Class Action Superiority (forthcoming from the Journal of Tort Law) contains an interesting insight about class action practice: when you get right down to it, there is little functional difference between (1) a class action settlement, (2) an AT&T "gold-plated" arbitration clause…
The Ten Most Interesting Class Action Articles of 2013
By The Editors on
Posted in Scholarship
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…
Re-appraising Issue Certification
By The Editors on
Posted in Certification, Scholarship
Since Judge Posner’s opinion in McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch almost two years ago, the issue of issue certification has been enjoying a renaissance. The latest entry in the discussion of how to look at issue certification comes from defense lawyer (and Georgetown adjunct law professor) Mark Perry, in his article Issue Certification under Rule…