Class Actions Brief Blog

A recurrent question under Rule 23 is whether and when individual issues pertaining to damages can engulf otherwise common questions and make class litigation unwieldy. The dilemma is clear: On the one hand, doesn’t it make sense to try the common liability issue once rather than over and over again? On the other hand, trying a bunch of individual damages issues, that differ from plaintiff to plaintiff, doesn’t sound either like class litigation or a model of efficiency. The United States Supreme Court, in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, has emphasized that lack of commonality in ...

Not every class action court filing in North and South Carolina becomes a full-length post on our blog. Here is a recap of August's filings:

Pohutsky v. Pella Corp., No. 2:14-cv-03491 (D.S.C. Aug. 29, 2014) (case transferred to MDL from U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland).

Dineen v. Pella Corp., No. 2:14-cv-03479 (D.S.C. Aug. 28, 2014) (case transferred to MDL from U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida).

Aldrich v. Convergent Outsourcing, Inc., No. 7:14-cv-03456 (D.S.C. Aug. 27, 2014) (alleging violations of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices ...

In a decision filed today, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to certify a class of Currituck County property owners upset about an easement affecting their coastal property. After observing that denial of class certification affects a substantial right, the Court upheld the trial court’s findings that the Parker’s Landing Property Owners’ Association Inc. (“POA”), the putative class representative, had a conflict with the members of the class and had not shown that “it would be impractical to join ...