Fifth Circuit

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Today the Supreme Court held that when a party files an immediate appeal of a federal district court order denying arbitration, the district court must stay its proceedings relating to the merits (including discovery) during the appeal. The decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski will have a significant impact in federal courts in California and New York in particular, where the prior regime had given district courts wide discretion over whether to grant full or partial stays pending appeal or to deny stays altogether.

As we anticipated from attending the oral arguments, the Justices were closely divided on the issue. In an opinion for the Court written by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court held, by a vote of 5-4, that “the district court must stay its proceedings” pending the outcome of the appeal.…

Continue Reading Supreme Court holds that district courts must stay proceedings pending appeals of orders denying arbitration

This morning we attended the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski. The issue presented in Coinbase is a procedural one, but of tremendous practical importance to defendants that seek to enforce arbitration agreements: does an appeal from an order denying a motion to compel arbitration automatically stay further proceedings in the district court during the appeal? …

Continue Reading Supreme Court hears oral argument in cases involving stays pending appeals of orders denying motions to compel arbitration

Win or lose, class actions that make it past the pleadings threaten businesses with enormous defense costs, especially the costs associated with class-wide discovery. As we’ve discussed before on this blog, one powerful tool for defendants to avoid these costs is to file an early motion to strike class allegations, taking a shot at nipping the class action in the bud when it is apparent from the pleadings that a class cannot be certified.

We were therefore pleased to see the Fifth Circuit recently join the growing ranks of courts that have endorsed pre-discovery motions to strike class allegations. In Elson v. Black, 56 F.4th 1002 (5th Cir. 2023), the court affirmed the district court’s order striking plaintiffs’ class allegations in their entirety. (The court also affirmed in large part the dismissal of the individual plaintiffs’ claims.)        …

Continue Reading Fifth Circuit affirms striking class allegations at the pleadings stage

Motions to dismiss federal-court actions based on a lack of Article III standing are succeeding more frequently—thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez.  That ruling reaffirmed and clarified that every plaintiff must plausibly allege a “concrete injury” that is “‘real,’ and not ‘abstract,’” even when the plaintiff claims a violation of federal statutory rights.

This past June, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) issued TransUnion and Concrete Harm: One Year Later, a 68-page report that we authored for ILR. It explains the multiple arguments made available, or strengthened, by…

Continue Reading The Courts of Appeals’ Rigorous Application of TransUnion’s Standing Analysis Continues To Provide Defendants With Strong Arguments For Defeating Non-Injury Class Actions

As we’ve noted in this space before, one of the most persistent efforts to undermine the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion—which held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) generally requires enforcing arbitration agreements that waive class or collective proceedings—has been spearheaded by the National Labor Relations Board. In 2012, the Board concluded in the D.R. Horton case (pdf) that Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the ability of employees to engage in “concerted activities” (for example, union organizing), supersedes the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the FAA in Concepcion and its progeny and requires that employees be allowed to bring class actions (either in court or in arbitration).

Until recently, the D.R. Horton rule had been rejected by every appellate court to consider it—the Second Circuit, Fifth Circuit, and Eighth Circuit as well as the California and Nevada Supreme Courts—not to mention numerous federal district courts. But last year, the Seventh Circuit and Ninth Circuit parted ways with this consensus, agreeing with the Board and concluding that (at least in some circumstances) agreements between employers and employees to arbitrate their disputes on an individual basis are unenforceable.

This circuit split all but guaranteed that the Supreme Court would need to step in, and sure enough, last Friday, the Court granted certiorari in three cases involving the validity of the D.R. Horton rule. (We drafted amicus briefs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in each case). One case, NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., arises out of a Board decision finding that an employer had engaged in an unfair labor practice by entering into arbitration agreements with its employees, and the other two, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis and Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris, are private-party disputes in which employees invoked D.R. Horton to challenge their arbitration agreements.…

Continue Reading Supreme Court Will Review NLRB’s Anti-Arbitration D.R. Horton Rule

Concept-Changes_Hughway_Sign_44809020Rule 23 may be in for some major changes. The Advisory Committee has commissioned a Rule 23 subcommittee to investigate possible revisions to the class action rules. That subcommittee issued a report (pdf) discussing its progress, and recently has been conducting a “listening tour” of sorts regarding potential rule changes.

Our initial view is that the business community should have serious concerns about the approach that at least some members of the subcommittee appear to be taking, as several proposals are aimed at rolling back judicial decisions—including Supreme Court decisions—that are critical to ensuring that class actions satisfy the requirements of due process.

Here are ten things you need to know from the subcommittee’s report.…

Continue Reading Ten Things Class Action Practitioners Need To Know About Potential Amendments To Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 23

Today is Halloween, an occasion when our thoughts turn to jack o’lanterns, ghosts, and zombies.  We are particularly fascinated by zombies—the dead returned to life. But we’re not the only ones.  In a decision earlier this week, a majority of the National Labor Relations Board voted to reanimate the dead.

The Board’s zombie of choice?  Its decision nearly three years ago in D.R. Horton (pdf), in which the Board sought to push back on arbitration agreements that require individual arbitration rather than class or collective actions.  As our readers know by now, most courts have accepted the Supreme Court’s clear …
Continue Reading NLRB Refuses To Yield On Anti-Arbitration Ruling Despite Near-Unanimous Rejection By Courts

We previously wrote about the Third Circuit’s decision in Carrera v. Bayer Corp., which reversed a district court’s class-certification order because there was no reliable way to ascertain class membership—indeed, no way to identify who was a member of the class aside from a class member’s own say-so. Last week, the full Third Circuit denied (pdf) the plaintiff’s request to rehear the case en banc over the dissent of four judges. The clear message of Carrera is that when plaintiffs file class actions that have no hope of compensating class members for alleged wrongs because the class members can’t be found, courts should refuse to let these actions proceed.

As we discuss below, the denial of rehearing is significant in itself, given the concerted efforts by Carrera and his amici to draw attention to the case. But what might be most significant about this latest set of opinions is what even the dissenting judges did not say.…

Continue Reading Third Circuit Rejects Effort At End Run Around The Ascertainability Requirement

When state attorneys general file suits to seek monetary recoveries based on claimed injuries to private citizens, those lawsuits look like, walk like, and quack like class actions. In fact, in most of these so-called “parens patriae” cases, the same private plaintiffs’ lawyers that bring private class actions are retained to represent states in exchange for the potential to garner substantial attorneys’ fees. While most class actions and mass actions of significance can be removed to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”), the Supreme Court held today in Mississippi ex rel. Hood v. …
Continue Reading Supreme Court Holds that CAFA Doesn’t Let Defendants Remove State AG Actions to Federal Court