The Supreme Court has resolved many important questions about personal jurisdiction. But somewhat surprisingly, it has not decided a fundamental question that arises in class actions – to establish specific personal jurisdiction (meaning case-linked personal jurisdiction) over a defendant, must the plaintiff establish that the defendant has sufficient connections to the forum with respect to all plaintiffs’ claims, or only the named plaintiffs’ claims? Not only has the Supreme Court not decided this question, but no court of appeals has yet decided it. The D.C. Circuit will likely be the first, in a case now pending – Molock v. Whole
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Supreme Court hears oral argument in case involving removal of counterclaim class actions
Class action defendants usually prefer to have their cases heard in federal court, where the protections of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 apply and where courts and juries are less likely to disfavor an out-of-state business. And as every class action defense lawyer knows, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”) puts a significant thumb on the scale in favor of having large class actions heard in federal court, allowing for removal of most class actions in which the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million and there is minimal diversity of citizenship between the defendants and the members of the putative class. But how should CAFA apply when one business sues a consumer and the consumer files as a counterclaim a class action against a different business? Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. v. Jackson, a case presenting that question. (One of us attended the oral argument.)
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First Circuit Reverses Class Certification Where Individualized Inquiries Would Be Required To Identify And Exclude Uninjured Class Members
Plaintiffs frequently seek to certify class actions where the proposed classes contain a significant number of uninjured persons. The First Circuit recently reversed the certification of such a class in In re Asacol Antitrust Litigation, concluding that a class cannot be certified where the “individual inquiries” necessary to resolve whether each class member has suffered an injury-in-fact “overwhelm common issues.” When such inquiries are needed to ensure that a defendant’s due process and jury trial rights are honored, a plaintiff cannot satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement. The court also rejected the plaintiff’s proposal to outsource these individualized inquiries to claims administrators.
We discuss the opinion in detail after the jump, but here are key takeaways for busy readers:
- The decision explains why a proposed damages class likely fails the predominance test—and therefore cannot be certified—if there are more than a negligible number of uninjured class members and there is no administratively feasible way to weed out those uninjured class members without individualized inquiries.
- The use of affidavits by class members to establish injury (or any other element of their claim) does not suffice to avoid individualized inquiries so long as the defendant plans to contest those affidavits, because a class cannot be certified on the premise that a defendant will not be entitled to challenge a class member’s ability to prove the elements of his or her claim.
- Policy justifications for consumer class actions cannot relax the requirements of Rule 23 or defendants’ due process and jury trial rights.
Supreme Court Will Review Whether Rule 23(f) Deadline To Appeal From Class Certification Orders Is Subject To Equitable Exceptions
Over the past few years, the Supreme Court has heard several cases involving class action procedure, including China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh; CalPERS v. ANZ Securities, Inc.; and Microsoft Corp. v. Baker. Today, the Supreme Court continued this trend, granting review to decide whether Rule 23(f)’s 14-day deadline to file a petition for permission to appeal an order granting or denying class certification is subject to equitable exceptions. Nutraceutical Corp. v. Lambert, No. 17-1094.
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SCOTUSblog Symposium on Supreme Court’s Decision in Epic
Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis (pdf). Here is a piece that my colleague and I wrote for SCOTUSblog about the Court’s decision and its implications.
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Making sense of the cascade of appellate decisions on ascertainability
We have repeatedly discussed in this space the ongoing debate among the federal courts about ascertainability—a red-hot topic in class action litigation these days. (For a more detailed look at our views on the ascertainability doctrine, see the amicus brief (pdf) that we filed on behalf of the National Association of Manufacturers in support of a pending cert petition.) That topic—and the debate among the lower courts—shows no sign of slowing down, as evidenced by new decisions issued by the Second, Sixth, and Third Circuits over the past two months. The central takeaway from these decisions is that while ascertainability is not a panacea for defendants facing consumer class actions, the doctrine (or variations on the ascertainability theme) should help defeat class actions in many circuits when class members cannot be identified without individualized inquiries.
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Two Recent Appellate Decisions Illustrate Divergent Approaches To Spokeo
Hundreds of lower courts have interpreted and applied the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins over the past ten months. We will provide a more comprehensive report on the post-Spokeo landscape in the near future, but the overarching takeaway is that the majority of federal courts of appeals have faithfully applied Spokeo’s core holdings that “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation,” and that a plaintiff does not “automatically satisf[y] the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right.” Nonetheless, a handful of other decisions have been receptive to arguments by the plaintiffs’ bar that Spokeo did not make a difference in the law of standing, and that the bare allegation that a statutory right has been violated, without more, remains enough to open the federal courthouse doors to “no-injury” class actions.
Two recent decisions by the Seventh and Third Circuits illustrate these contrasting approaches.
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Ninth Circuit rejects meaningful ascertainability requirement for class certification, cementing deep circuit split
Can you have a class action if class members can’t reliably be found? That question is at the heart of the debate over ascertainability—one that has divided the federal courts. Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit weighed in, holding in Briseno v. ConAgra Foods, Inc. (pdf) that plaintiffs need not demonstrate “an administratively feasible way to identify class members [as] a prerequisite to class certification.”
That conclusion is disappointing.
En Banc Ninth Circuit Permits Removal Under CAFA of a Subdivided Mass Action
Over the past few years, a number of plaintiffs’ lawyers have attempted—with some success—to circumvent the “mass action” provisions in the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”), which allow defendants to remove to federal court certain cases raising “claims of 100 or more persons that are proposed to be tried jointly.” 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(11)(B)(i). Although these lawyers represent 100-plus clients with substantively identical claims, they subdivide their mass actions into multiple parallel cases, often with just under 100 plaintiffs each. And to avoid the “proposed to be tried jointly” language of CAFA, they remain coy about—or
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Book Review: The Class Action Fairness Act: Law and Strategy
In nearly nine years on the books, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”) has generated a host of decisions interpreting its provisions. Because the state of the law on CAFA—and class actions in general—is in constant flux, practitioners should certainly make use of online resources (like this blog) to stay up to date. But sometimes what’s needed is a desktop reference that places at one’s fingertips the answers to how to remove a case under CAFA—or how to resist that removal. To fill that need, the ABA’s Section of Litigation recently issued The Class Action Fairness Act: Law
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