Just a brief update on the 9th Circuit’s most controversial class-action case of the year. As expected, the proponents of the settlement that was rejected have appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit en banc.
What is slightly less expected is the alliance of interests that have filed amicus briefs. As Law360 reports,…
Earlier this week, in In re Hyundai & Kia Fuel Efficiency Litig., the Ninth Circuit vacated a nationwide class action settlement, ruling that the lower court had abused its discretion by not considering whether the variations in the consumer-protection laws of the fifty states might predominate over common issues in the case. The ruling…
Commonality (Rule 23(a)(2)) and predominance (one half of Rule 23(b)(3)) are often considered the heart of the class action certification inquiry. Rightly so, for they both strike at the real question a judge must ask: do the class members have enough in common to justify binding them all together in a single case? Through the…
This week’s case is the first known follow-up to the Sixth Circuit’s Pilgrim opinion, Rikos v. Proctor & Gamble Co., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25104, (S.D. Ohio 2012). In Rikos, the plaintiff sued Proctor & Gamble for allegedly misrepresenting the ability of its product Align to aid in digestion. The plaintiff filed in the…
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.
Phillips Petroleum v. Shutts involved a lawsuit by a class of gas royalty owners (folks who own the rights to income from gas produced on land) against an oil company. The royalty owners brought their class action in Kansas state court, alleging that Phillips Petroleum had not paid them on time, and so they…
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…
See, here’s the thing. Russell Jackson stole my case. The Seventh Circuit decided an important case on the limits of Rule 23(b)(2)–Kartman v. State Farm Mutual Auto Ins.–and I set it aside to blog about today. But Jackson’s great writeup covers everything I wanted to.
And here’s the other thing. There have…
If I may draw on my (necessarily narrow) experience as a class-action litigator, a rising number of class actions are asserting nationwide contract claims, and specifically claims for the breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing. I could speculate on the reason for that (new class-action theories come into vogue; there has…
Castano v. American Tobacco Co. (5th Cir. 1996) involved a class of smokers, their estates, and their survivors arrayed against what was becoming a classic corporate villain: the tobacco companies.
Like in In re Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, the atmospherics favored the plaintiffs. Tobacco companies had already lost credibility in the court of public…
