On May 28, 2024, Chief Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, certified a class of consumers in an action against Barilla Foods....more
Life has its disappointments. Sometimes, you think you’ve won a free car, but it turns out that you’ve won only a couple of dollars. And sometimes, you think that an appellate court will clarify a thorny issue of class-action...more
One of the key issues at class certification is whether plaintiffs have met their burden to establish commonality and predominance: that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions...more
On January 18, a court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin denied class certification in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case concluding that the factual issue of whether the proposed class members had suffered an...more
Fourth Circuit Holds That Class Action Waiver Issue Must Be Decided Before Certification and Questions Narrow Issue Classes - In In re Marriott International, Inc., 78 F.4th 677 (4th Cir. 2023), a panel of the U.S. Court...more
Joining every other circuit to address the same issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently ruled that a consumer does not have to prove actual damages to recover statutory damages for willful...more
Court also holds that arbitrability questions must be resolved by the arbitrator - The 10th Circuit has decided two significant issues in an otherwise garden-variety off-the-clock case, one relating to arbitration and the...more
On October 12, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied certification of a putative class action asserting that TransUnion violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Missouri...more
A recent case from the Eastern District of California emphasizes the importance of employers having facially neutral and lawful wage-and-hour policies – as such policies can help in defeating class certification. In Tavares,...more
Several appellate decisions addressed the “implicit” class action requirement of ascertainability during the second quarter of 2023, with the Third, Tenth and D.C. Circuits weighing in. Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit maintained...more
Takeaway: Federal Rule 23 authorizes representative litigation in the form of class actions that satisfy its various requirements. The policy underlying the rule is efficiency. For example, the numerosity element (Rule...more
In conjunction with the G7 Summit in Japan, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) introduced additional economic sanctions on May 19, 2023, with the aim of further limiting the...more
Fail-Safe Class Definition. The District of Columbia Circuit reversed a district court’s denial of a class action on the grounds the plaintiffs had proposed an impermissible “fail safe” class—i.e., a class definition for...more
Last month, the D.C. Circuit deepened a circuit split on the issue of fail-safe classes. The decision, In re White, 64 F.4th 302 (D.C. Cir. 2023), rejected a categorical rule against all fail-safe classes in favor of a...more
This week, the Court addresses when individualized issues may preclude class certification, and considers the public’s right of access to court proceedings seeking third-party assistance with criminal investigations. The...more
Rule 23 does not explicitly require that a court be able to determine who the members are before certifying a class. But judges have found implicit in the Rule a requirement that membership in a defined class be...more
Class actions have long been difficult to certify in fraud cases. But a recent district court decision in California takes a new approach that would make class certification in fraud cases the norm. That decision is now on...more
The volumes of data involved in Multi District Litigation and Class Actions are exploding in both size and diversity, with no end in sight. Analysts project that the volumes of data being produced will double every two years,...more
In Ali v. City of Chicago, —F.4th—, 2022 WL 1548176 (May 17, 2022), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down one litigant’s attempt to employ a “stealth” class action....more
The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's recent watershed decision in Olean Wholesale Grocery Cooperative Inc. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC established several significant benchmarks for determining class...more
Over the past 25 years, I have had the good fortune of getting to know and working with both plaintiff and defendant class action lawyers from many states, and to teach class action practice in dozens of local and national...more
A California federal court refused to certify a putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class action in a lawsuit brought by a plaintiff who received one prerecorded call in error after a gym member’s phone number...more
This week, the Ninth Circuit digs into class certification standards for Title IX cases. A.B. AND A.M.B. V. HAWAII STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION - The Court holds that a putative class action by female student...more
Takeaway: When a district court certifies a damages class action, it often cites the long line of cases holding that, because damages for each class member can be determined after a class action trial on liability,...more
Earlier this month, Proskauer – along with co-counsel Disability Rights Advocates (“DRA”), a nationwide nonprofit disability rights legal center – obtained class certification in an important litigation in the U.S. District...more