statistical evidence

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This past Supreme Court Term included several closely-watched cases.  One of the most studied was Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, in which the Court identified at least one area of class action litigation where using statistical evidence instead of plaintiff-specific evidence might be allowed when determining class certification.

Since the Court issued its opinion, defendants…

Often, when a plaintiffs’ counsel seek to certify a class asserting a hard-to-prove financial injury, they will rely on a statistics or economics expert to demonstrate that there has been some kind of “common overcharge” for the product at issue.  This method is extremely common in antitrust class actions, but also shows up increasingly in

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Ah, class decertification in district court…the rarely glimpsed, late-harvest victory that comparatively few class action defense counsel can claim to have tasted. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California recently delivered one such victory for the 2016 vintage, decertifying a plaintiff class he originally certified in 2012 in a wage-and-hour litigation…

 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…

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, Justice Scalia registered his disapproval of using statistics to litigate liability in a class action, writing

The Court of Appeals believed that it was possible to replace such proceedings with Trial by Formula. A sample set of the class members would be selected, as to whom liability for

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