A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Panel recently affirmed a district court order remanding a putative class action to state court after the defendants' initial removal under CAFA. The case involved claims on behalf of users of the Golden Gate Bridge against three defendants for violations of California's privacy statutes concerning the collection and sharing of personally identifiable information. Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that after collecting information of ... Keep Reading »
Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) Articles
The latest CAFA developments and trends, including news, key cases, and strategies.
Don’t Count Your Chickens – Or State Citizens for CAFA Exceptions – Before They Hatch
The Ninth Circuit vacated a remand order implicating the local and home-state controversy exceptions to CAFA jurisdiction in a putative class action by former California resident employees of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) for state wage-and-hour law violations. The court ruled that the plaintiffs did not meet their burden to prove that “greater than two-thirds of proposed class members” were residents of California to invoke the exceptions. Originally filed in ... Keep Reading »
Too Fast and Furious: Ninth Circuit Unwinds Hyundai and Kia Nationwide Class Action Settlement
In a split panel, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s certification of a nationwide class action settlement because the lower court failed to conduct a sufficient predominance inquiry under Rule 23(b)(3). In 2012 Hyundai and Kia were accused of overstating their fuel efficiency estimates in advertisements and car window stickers for certain of their vehicles. A flurry of putative class action litigation ensued across the country, and the MDL ... Keep Reading »
State of Louisiana, as Absent Class Member, Escapes CAFA Settlement Trap
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a Pennsylvania district court decision holding the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prevented a private party from enjoining the state of Louisiana from bringing claims identical to those previously thought released in a class action settlement. As our prior post detailed, in 2013 pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) settled a class action brought against it by indirect purchasers of the allergy ... Keep Reading »
Consolidated Cholesterol Drug Cases Lack Critical Mass for CAFA Jurisdiction
The Central District of California district court recently weighed in on the limits of mass action jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). The matter began as various individual state court actions alleging that a cholesterol medication caused women taking the drug to suffer from Type II diabetes; after the state court granted a request for “coordination” of the cases, defendant pharmaceutical company removed the cases to federal court based on CAFA’s ... Keep Reading »
Attempting to Counter a CAFA Loophole
Home Depot filed a certiorari petition in the United States Supreme Court aimed at closing an emerging loophole in CAFA jurisprudence in various circuits. According to the petition, some circuits have “narrowly construed CAFA’s removal statute to forbid removal by a newly-added counterclaim defendant in an otherwise removable class action.” This litigation began as a collection dispute brought by the original plaintiff against certain customers, the original ... Keep Reading »
Saved By The Bellwether Trial in the Ninth Circuit
Removal under the “mass action” provision of the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) is appropriate when 100 or more plaintiffs take the affirmative step of proposing to try their claims jointly and the claims involve common issues of law or fact. The Ninth Circuit recently examined whether plaintiffs’ request for a bellwether trial in eight separate cases involving the same allegedly defective medical devices amounted to a proposal to have claims tried jointly thereby ... Keep Reading »
Eleventh Circuit Finds Dual Citizenship Defeats CAFA Diversity
The Eleventh Circuit recently denied a petition to appeal an order remanding a putative class action to state court, finding the defendant corporations’ dual citizenship defeated minimal diversity under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in Georgia state court against two insurance companies, alleging a variety of state law claims and limiting the class to include only Georgia citizens. The defendant companies removed under CAFA. Both were ... Keep Reading »
Judge Gorsuch on Class Actions
On January 31, President Trump announced that Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals would be nominated for the United States Supreme Court. We took a look at those opinions authored by Judge Gorsuch on the Tenth Circuit that primarily addressed class action issues. These decisions confront a range of problems that arise in class action litigation. They also reveal his accessible, sometimes breezy, sometimes pointed, writing style. Four such decisions ... Keep Reading »
No, Yes, or Back to State Court? Three Circuits Address Standing in Statutory “No Injury” Class Actions
In Spokeo, the Supreme Court declined to answer the certified question of whether a plaintiff suing for violation of a federal statute satisfied Article III’s standing requirement by alleging no concrete injury as a result of that violation. Instead, the Court vacated and remanded the case to the Ninth Circuit to address whether the plaintiff satisfied the “concreteness” requirement for Article III standing. On January 20, the Seventh and Third Circuits weighed in ... Keep Reading »
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