The 2023 Carlton Fields Class Action Survey found that the second most successful class action defense is the lack of any actual injury suffered by some or all of the class. It also found that this defense made a big jump in effectiveness from the previous year’s survey. Those findings may be related to the fact that just over two years ago, in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Supreme Court confirmed that “Article III does not give federal courts the power to order ... Keep Reading »
Certification Class Action Articles
The latest class action developments and trends in certification, including news, key cases, and strategies.
Proposed Cryptocurrency Class Action Goes Forward in Florida With Defendant’s Help
Two plaintiffs in Miami-Dade County have filed a class action complaint against cryptocurrency platform Empires X Corp. and its founders based on an alleged Ponzi scheme. In Villanueva v. Empires X Corp., pending in Florida’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit, the plaintiffs allege that they, as well as several other damaged investors, provided millions of dollars to Empires X Corp. based on extensive misrepresentations that Empires X Corp. was a legitimate investment ... Keep Reading »
District Court Asks Sixth Circuit to Review Two-Step FLSA Collective Certification Test
The Sixth Circuit will soon tell us whether it will follow the Fifth Circuit’s lead in Swales v. KLLM Transport Services LLC and adopt a more exacting, one-stage certification approach for Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions, or instead officially adopt the two-stage certification process set out in Lusardi v. Xerox Corp., which is currently followed by most district courts. In Holder v. A&L Home Care & Training Center LLC, former aides claimed that ... Keep Reading »
Eleventh Circuit Affirms Class Certification and Settlement in “Factually Peculiar” In re Checking Account Overdraft Litigation Saga
Twelve years after it started, the saga of RBC Bank’s alleged improper assessment and collection of overdraft fees appears to have come to an end. In affirming the district court's certification of the class and approval of a settlement, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that “typicality” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 does not require identical claims or defenses and that only a substantial conflict of interest can destroy adequacy of a class ... Keep Reading »
Inherently Transitory Exception to Save Transgender Inmate Putative Class?
Mootness, as one of the big three justiciability requirements, is a jurisdictional requirement on which judges do not normally postpone adjudication. But in a recent putative class action of transgender inmates, the D.C. district court held off on its determination to examine a rarely invoked exception to the mootness doctrine applied only in the class context. Sunday Hinton, a transgender woman who was housed in the men’s unit of the D.C. jail, brought a putative ... Keep Reading »
MDL Court Denies Class Certification of Proposed “NAS Babies” Class
The opioid MDL court (the Northern District of Ohio) recently denied class certification to plaintiffs seeking class certification as guardians of individual children diagnosed at birth with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). The court noted that these children are sometimes referred to colloquially as “NAS babies.” The primary basis for the court’s denial of class certification was its determination that the proposed class failed the test of ascertainability as ... Keep Reading »
What’s Good for Trial Is Good for Class Certification: Fifth Circuit Rules That Daubert Applies at Class Certification Stage
Class discovery is inherently more limited than normal fact discovery for trial, and litigators understandably approach it in a more narrow fashion than they would trial discovery. The Fifth Circuit recently reminded class action litigators, however, that such tailoring should not be extended to expert discovery. In Prantil v. Arkema Inc., the court joined the Second, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits in ruling that the Daubert analysis governing the admission of expert ... Keep Reading »
Article III and Rule 23: Do We Stand Together or All on Our Own?
On December 16, 2020, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC. Specifically, the Supreme Court granted certiorari for the following question: Whether either Article III or Rule 23 permits a damages class action where the vast majority of the class suffered no actual injury, let alone an injury anything like what the class representative suffered. The Supreme Court’s certiorari ... Keep Reading »
Sixth Circuit Rejects a Novel Concept: Certification of “Negotiation Class” in Opioid Multidistrict Litigation
The Sixth Circuit recently addressed whether a novel negotiation class could be certified to facilitate possible future settlement negotiations in multidistrict litigation (MDL). The Sixth Circuit's decision arises from the opioid MDL in the Northern District of Ohio, on which we previously reported. In June 2019, 51 of the plaintiff cities and counties moved to certify a "negotiation class" under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3). The plaintiffs sought to ... Keep Reading »
High School Female Athletes Face Hurdles to Class Certification
The U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii recently denied female student-athletes’ motion for class certification under Title IX even though it rejected the defendants’ attacks on mootness and standing as well as Rule 23(a)’s requirements for commonality, typicality, and adequacy. Instead, the court found that the proposed class failed to satisfy the numerosity requirement that joinder would be impracticable. The underlying case centered on Title IX ... Keep Reading »
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 20
- Next Page »