The big news this quarter is the U.S. Supreme Court’s acceptance of Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, an employment case likely to have major ramifications across the whole spectrum of class action litigation. The Court is set to consider two huge issues: the use of statistical techniques and averaging and the inclusion of class members who were not injured. The 2-1 Eighth Circuit majority opinion being reviewed punted on many of the hard issues because the case was before them on a rare class action jury verdict. We expect the Supremes, especially the Dukes/Comcast majority, to give those hard issues a very hard look.
In other news, privacy continued to be a red hot area, and the Third Circuit’s tightening of ascertainability requirements in consumer cases continued to face challenges. In the wake of Judge Posner’s troika of settlement decisions, judges stepped up their scrutiny of attorneys’ fees requests.
Please see full publication below for more information.