Class Actions Brief Blog

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

Duckworth v. Lumber Liquidators, Inc., No. 5:15-cv-42 (W.D.N.C. Mar. 31, 2015) (asserting statewide class action for purported defects in Lumber Liquidators’ Chinese wood flooring). This is the first North Carolina case involving Lumber Liquidators’ allegedly defective flooring, which is already the subject of the Green, White, Sahn, and Watson cases in South Carolina.

Parker v. A Backyard Creation, LLC, No. 4:15-cv-1389 (D.S.C. Mar ...

There is a well-known quip about the two best days for boat owners: the day when the owner buys it and the day when he sells it. We’ve previously referred to case law emphasizing the need for more active supervision of settlements, particularly with respect to commonality issues, but the fact remains that judges are often happy to have a class action in their court go away. Indeed, when plaintiffs and defendants unite in their application, and the objectors are few and subdued, settlements most often go through. We highlight Judge Norton’s decision preliminarily approving a ...

On March 3, 2015, Judge Michael O’Foghludha, a Rule 2.1 judge appointed to hear the controversy, granted a motion to certify a class of state magistrates serving between 2009 and 2014. Adams v. State, No. 14-CVS-15027 (Wake Cnty. N.C. Super. Ct. Mar. 3, 2015). The principal common issues appear to be whether a statutory “step increase” in pay became a part of the individual employment contracts of the magistrates and whether the State could suspend these step increases without incurring liability. The certification order affects approximately 650 magistrates.

In its ...

In two recent studies of shareholder class actions over corporate mergers, the authors reached conclusions consistent with our experience with such cases in North Carolina: that nearly every acquisition of a public company results in shareholder litigation. The Cornerstone Research report found that 93% of public company acquisitions were challenged. Takeover Litigation in 2014, a separate study by Matthew Cain of the SEC and Steven Solomon of UC Berkeley, found that 94.9 of deals were challenged. (The two studies used slightly different cutoffs for their samples.)

Both ...

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

McCants v. The Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, No. 1:15-cv-00176 (M.D.N.C. Feb. 27, 2015) (removal of class action brought on behalf of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student athletes who enrolled in putative “sham paper classes” from 1989 to 2011, alleging negligence and breaches of fiduciary duty, implied contract, and implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing against the NCAA and UNC). The 100-page complaint