Class Actions Brief Blog

Two Missouri pets—and what’s in their prescription food—may ultimately determine where and how class actions are litigated. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court held oral argument in Royal Canin U.S.A. Inc. v. Wullschleger, where the central question is whether putative class action plaintiffs who have had their cases removed to federal court can amend their complaints to strip references to federal jurisdiction and return to state court.

Royal Canin began in 2019, when the owners of a dog named Carter and a cat named Sassie filed a proposed class action in Missouri ...

When a class action lawsuit ends, class counsel typically seek a fee award. Under Rule 23(h), the district court must make findings of facts and conclusions of law to support an award of “reasonable attorney’s fees and nontaxable costs” to the class counsel. Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(h). In calculating these fees, courts generally use one of two different methods: (1) the “lodestar” method; or (2) the “percentage of fund” method.

1. Lodestar Method. Under the “lodestar” method, the district court identifies a lodestar figure by multiplying the number of hours expended by ...

Under the American Pipe doctrine, the commencement of a class action tolls the statute of limitations for absent class members. American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah, 414 U.S. 538, 554 (1974). The intent of this rule is to protect the interests of class members and preserve the efficiencies of class litigation. Without tolling, absent class members would need to intervene or file individual claims to preserve their rights if the court denies class certification. See Crown, Cork & Seal Co. v. Parker, 462 U.S. 345, 350 (1983). We have discussed American Pipe tolling on the blog before ...

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f) gives the court of appeals discretion to review a narrow class of interlocutory orders: those granting or denying class certification. But it is sometimes possible for other orders to come along for the ride, as demonstrated by the Fourth Circuit’s recent decision in Elegant Massage LLC v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, 95 F.4th 181 (4th Cir. 2024). The court’s use of pendent appellate jurisdiction could expand the opportunities for interlocutory review of merits-related rulings in class action litigation.

A Class for ...

When a class action is filed in state court, most defendants first evaluate whether the case can be removed to federal court. The Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) offers a broader avenue to remove cases to federal court than traditional diversity jurisdiction. Removal under CAFA is permissible if (1) the amount in controversy exceeds $5,000,000 (which can include treble and punitive damages), (2) there are 100 or more putative class members, and (3) any class member is a citizen of a different state from any defendant.

But what happens if a defendant removes a case to federal court under ...

Life has its disappointments. Sometimes, you think you’ve won a free car, but it turns out that you’ve won only a couple of dollars. And sometimes, you think that an appellate court will clarify a thorny issue of class-action law, but the court leaves that issue unresolved. These scenarios coalesced in a recent decision from the North Carolina Supreme Court: Surgeon v. TKO Shelby LLC.

The Surgeon case arose when hundreds of people allegedly suffered the first disappointment above. A car dealership mailed out flyers that advertised a scratch-off contest. According to the ...

One of the key issues at class certification is whether plaintiffs have met their burden to establish commonality and predominance: that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members,” as required by Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3). Plaintiffs often rely on an expert model purporting to show that injury and damages can be determined classwide, so those issues do not defeat predominance.

A recent series of cases, most involving the insurance value of cars totaled in accidents, provide a useful reminder that, when a ...

Our colleague Erik Zimmerman reported in an earlier post the memorable declaration from defense counsel in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021): when a legal violation results in no harm, those involved should “break out the champagne,” not “break out a lawsuit.”

In TransUnion, decided in 2021, the Supreme Court grappled with a question that has vexed federal courts in recent years: how much leeway should plaintiffs have to bring federal suits based on “intangible harms”? Article III courts have been redressing obvious harms to person and pocketbook since the ...

In general, a litigant cannot sue for another person’s injury. In that circumstance, the litigant has no “standing” to pursue those claims. But Rule 23 — at least in a broad sense — allows a class representative to assert claims for her own injuries and for the injuries experienced by others, at least if the class representative’s claim is “typical” and there are “common questions” at issue.

Analytically, these are different concepts. Standing, at least in federal courts, relates to a court’s constitutional jurisdiction, is most often determined at the ...

On Aug. 18, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion in the long-running Marriott Data Breach MDL Litigation. The Fourth Circuit reversed a district court’s class certification decision, holding that the district court erred in certifying damages classes against the Marriott defendants without first addressing, as a threshold issue, the potential enforceability of a “class-action waiver” that could be applicable to all members of the putative class. The Court of Appeals also reversed the district court’s certification of issue ...