Class Actions Brief Blog

The North Carolina Supreme Court’s recent decision in Empire Contractors, Inc. v. Town of Apex, 923 S.E.2d 516 (N.C. 2025), highlights the importance that individual fact issues can play at the class certification stage, including in cases under the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure.

In Empire Contractors, a developer brought a putative class action against the Town of Apex challenging the Town’s collection of recreation fees from developers when they develop land and seeking a refund of paid fees. It also sought a declaration that the fee was unlawful under North ...

In earlier posts, we’ve discussed a hotly debated topic in class-action law: ascertainability. One of those posts described a case where a procedural hiccup denied the North Carolina Supreme Court a chance to address this issue. We expressed hope at the time that the Supreme Court would soon have another chance to bring clarity to North Carolina law on ascertainability. The Court recently got that chance and took it.

As we’ve discussed before, the ascertainability requirement reflects a straightforward point: For a court to certify a class, it must be able to identify the class ...

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 23(c)(1)(A) requires district courts to decide whether to certify a class at “an early practicable time.” When defendants seek to strip a suit of its class allegations at the earliest practicable time — before discovery — parties and courts have varied in the analytical frameworks that they cite as the basis for certification decisions, sometimes relying on subsections of Rule 23 and sometimes on Rule 12(f).

The Fourth Circuit recently clarified the applicable analytical framework for pre-discovery class certification decisions in ...

Monsanto and its parent Bayer recently announced that they had reached a proposed class action settlement to resolve most claims alleging Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) caused by exposure to Roundup weed killer. See King v. Monsanto, No. 2622-CC00325 (Mo. Circ. Ct. Feb. 17, 2026). Over 52,000 Roundup claims based on NHL involving over 125,000 plaintiffs have been filed since 2015. The new settlement (proposed under Missouri’s analogue to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3)) would require Monsanto to make $7.25 billion in total payments over a 16-year period. The details of ...

As we’ve discussed on the blog before, the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) expands federal subject matter jurisdiction over large-scale class actions. Federal courts have jurisdiction under CAFA if (1) the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million, (2) there are more than 100 putative class members, and (3) any member of the putative class is a citizen of a state different from any defendant. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2).

The third requirement for CAFA jurisdiction—that any class member is a citizen of a different state from any defendant—is known as “minimal diversity.” ...

Class certification can be a key battleground in class actions. Successful certification of a class often gives plaintiffs leverage in a case, while defendants that successfully oppose class certification may significantly limit or eliminate their potential liability.

Parties often rely on experts to support their class certification arguments, particularly where large data sets must be analyzed to identify members of the proposed class or to analyze alleged damages. The expert testimony can assist the fact finder in evaluating the relevant evidence.

To ensure that an ...

In recent years, defendants in data breach class action lawsuits filed in the state courts in North Carolina have succeeded in designating these disputes to the North Carolina Business Court. The Business Court has accepted data breach cases involving ransomware attacks, phishing email incidents and tracking technology cases. This post reviews these cases, as well as a recent decision where the Business Court rejected designation, to provide an overview of the Court’s approach to determining which cases will qualify.

To request designation as a “mandatory complex business ...

Since the Supreme Court’s opinion in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021), litigants and courts alike have struggled to determine whether certain intangible harms are “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent” such that a plaintiff has standing to sue. Indeed, this blog has previously analyzed cases addressing that question here and here.

The Fourth Circuit weighed in recently, holding that a subset of plaintiffs whose drivers’ license numbers were leaked and published online had standing to sue, but the plaintiffs whose numbers were leaked and ...

A recent North Carolina Supreme Court decision, Jackson v. Home Depot U.S.A. Inc., 919 S.E.2d 199 (N.C. 2025), highlights the importance of choice of law issues underlying putative class actions.

Plaintiff bought a home water treatment system from Carolina Water Systems while the company was offering rebates if customers made referrals. Carolina Water Systems was the authorized provider for these treatment systems through Home Depot in North and South Carolina. After plaintiff was sued by his credit card company to collect the amount owed for his system installation, plaintiff ...

This blog often focuses on traditional, opt-out class actions brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, but there is another common form of mass action: collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. More than 5,000 collective action lawsuits are filed each year under the FLSA and ADEA, making those claims among the most popular forms of mass action and worthy of continued attention.

The FLSA and ADEA allow for aggregate litigation by providing that claims can be brought by employees on behalf of themselves and “other ...