Class Actions Brief Blog

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 ...