Since its enactment in 2005, the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) has provided defendants with additional opportunities to remove state-law claims to federal court. Among other things, the statute expands federal courts’...more
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a series of decisions addressing the Article III standing of consumer plaintiffs alleging violations of the Fair Debt...more
12/18/2020
/ Appellate Courts ,
Burden of Proof ,
Class Action ,
Debt Collection ,
Evidentiary Hearings ,
FDCPA ,
HOA Dues ,
Putative Class Actions ,
SCOTUS ,
Spokeo v Robins ,
Subject Matter Jurisdiction
In 2017, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted a new class action rule, modeled after Fed. R. Civ. P. 23, with the avowed purpose of aligning state class-action practice with the federal practice and encouraging resort to the...more
Buried in a footnote in the February 7 opinion in a criminal appeal is a helpful reminder for all advocates in the Seventh Circuit, including those handling civil appeals. In United States v. Moody, No. 18-1837 (7th Cir. Feb....more
As Wisconsin lawyers well know, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has been working with less than its fully authorized complement of eleven active circuit judges since Judge Terence Evans took senior status in...more
The U.S. Supreme Court today decided unanimously that, when cases are consolidated under Fed. R. Civ. P. 42(a), they nevertheless remain separate cases. In Hall v. Hall, No. 16-1150, two separate cases had been consolidated...more
A feature of 28 U.S.C. § 1332, the diversity-jurisdiction statute, may make you scratch your head and wonder why it’s there. In the Seventh Circuit’s March 15, 2018 decision in Hyland v. Liberty Mutual Fire Ins. Co., No....more
In Doermer v. Oxford Fin’l Group, Ltd., No. 17-1659 (7th Cir. Mar. 7, 2018), the Seventh Circuit had before it an example of what Chief Judge Diane Wood called a “depressingly common” type of litigation: “[f]amily disputes...more
3/19/2018
/ Derivative Suit ,
Diversity Jurisdiction ,
Family Trusts ,
Federal Jurisdiction ,
FRCP 19 ,
Involuntary Liquidation ,
Joinder ,
Jurisdiction ,
Pleading Standards ,
Real Party in Interest ,
Removal
The federal supplemental jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1367, allows a litigant with a federal claim to bring into federal court with it any state claims that are so related to the federal claim that they “form part of the...more
1/24/2018
/ 42 U.S.C. §1983 ,
Artis v District of Columbia ,
Breach of Contract ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Discrimination ,
Dismissals ,
Fourth Amendment ,
SCOTUS ,
Split of Authority ,
State Law Claims ,
Title VII ,
Tolling
This week's unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon, 581 U.S. ___, No. 16-254, points out a glaring omission in Wisconsin’s service-of-process rules that ought to be fixed, so that Wisconsin...more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, 581 U.S. ___, No. 16-348, draws attention in passing to a peculiar feature of Wisconsin law on the effect of statutes of limitations. The 5-3...more
The Seventh Circuit is very serious about treating its panel decisions as the “law of the court” unless and until they are overruled by the en banc court or a higher authority. Hence, its Circuit Rule 40(e) requires a panel...more
The Bankruptcy Code permits a bankruptcy trustee to compel return of a payment made to a creditor within 90 days before a bankruptcy petition. 11 U.S.C. § 547(b)(4)(A). The justification for compelling the return of...more
Imagine that, at the end of a case, the judge decides to impose sanctions on you for the way in which you have handled discovery, or done something at trial. In the order requiring you and your client to pay your opponent...more
A decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit earlier this month, Wrenn v. District of Columbia, D.C. Cir. No. 15-7057, is a reminder of the crucial importance of crossing t’s and dotting i’s when it comes to...more
The fat was really thrown into the fire in the Seventh Circuit on August 19, 2015 on the long-mooted subject of the propriety of internet factual research by appellate courts.
Judge Richard Posner, who often chafes...more
The Seventh Circuit issued an important opinion by Judge Easterbrook today, Lu Junhong v. Boeing Co., No. 14-1825, a clump of cases that arose after an Asiana Airlines jet manufactured by Boeing struck a seawall while landing...more
7/10/2015
/ Appeals ,
Asiana ,
Boeing ,
Federal Admiralty Law ,
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ,
Federal Jurisdiction ,
Federal Question Jurisdiction ,
Jurisdiction ,
Remand ,
Removal ,
Tort ,
Transocean
A few months ago, we commented on an aspect of the interaction between the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law (WFDL), Wis. Stat. ch. 135, and arbitration, as discussed by the Seventh Circuit in Everett v. Paul Davis Restoration,...more
As we explained in a post yesterday, the Seventh Circuit in In re Bronk (Cirilli v. Bronk), No. 13-1123 (7th Cir. Jan. 5, 2015), made some new law on Wisconsin’s college savings account (Edvest) and annuity exemptions for...more
In re Bronk (Cirilli v. Bronk), No. 13-1123 (7th Cir. Jan. 5, 2015), resolved a couple of “questions of first impression,” slip op. at 1, under Wisconsin’s exemption statute in a case where a bankruptcy trustee sought to...more
We wrote earlier this week about the new opinion drafting procedure in Wisconsin’s supreme court. To recap, the state’s justices voted 4-3 earlier this term to impose deadlines on the drafting process, presumably in response...more
Everyone knows that you can’t be compelled to arbitrate a dispute unless you’ve agreed to do so. But what everyone knows is sometimes wrong. There are situations in which a person has to arbitrate even though she didn’t sign...more
The plaintiffs in Wisconsin’s Voter ID case yesterday filed an emergency application with Justice Kagan, the Circuit Justice assigned to the Seventh Circuit, seeking an order vacating the Seventh Circuit’s September 12 stay...more
Two weeks ago, in an order given wide publicity nationally, federal District Judge Mark Bennett of the Northern District of Iowa issued sanctions in Security National Bank v. Abbott Laboratories, addressing what Judge Bennett...more
The Supreme Court will now decide whether a 2006 Seventh Circuit decision on Class Action Fairness Act pleading requirements was correct. The Court granted certiorari today in a case that will resolve whether defendants...more