Class Actions Brief Blog

Updated 8-16-22: StarKist and the other defendants filed their petition for certiorari in the Olean Wholesale Grocery case. A link to the Petition is here.

In September 2021 and again in June of this year, we wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Olean Wholesale Grocery v. Bumble Bee Foods and the court’s opinion following rehearing en banc. The defendants in Olean obtained a extension to file a certiorari petition with the Supreme Court through August 8, 2022, so the last word may not have been written in Olean.

On July 5, 2022, the Ninth Circuit issued another notable class ...

Last September, we wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Olean Wholesale Grocery v. Bumble Bee Foods and the court’s decision to rehear the case en banc.  The en banc Ninth Circuit has now waded back into the class certification waters, with mixed results for defendants.  While the en banc court tossed back the panel’s holding that the presence of more than a de minimis number of uninjured class members is fatal to certification, it also clarified certain procedural matters under Rule 23 that may lead to smoother sailing for defendants at the certification stage.

As we ...

A leading feature of the Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes is the “rigorous scrutiny” the trial court must apply to determine whether the evidence plaintiffs offer to support class certification meets the requirements of Rule 23. Following the Supreme Court’s decisions in Wal-Mart and Comcast, “[i]t is now indisputably the role of the district court to scrutinize the evidence before granting certification, even when doing so ‘requires inquiry into the merits of the claim.’” Rail Freight, 725 F.3d at 253 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (quoting Comcast ...

The extent to which the presence of uninjured class members may defeat class certification remains unsettled. While, standing alone, the existence of some uninjured class members may not be not fatal (depending on the circuit), just how many is too many to satisfy the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b)(3) is still in flux.

The Ninth Circuit waded into this debate earlier this year in Olean Wholesale Grocery Coop. Inc. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC. Before the case made its way to the appellate court, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California certified three classes ...

Cone v. American Airlines Group Inc., a case filed this Thursday in the Middle District of North Carolina, is one of dozens of antitrust suits filed against the major U.S. airlines in courts across the country in recent weeks. With the addition of North Carolina, suits are now pending in at least seven states and the District of Columbia. Terry Maxon, who blogs about the airline business for the Dallas Morning News, has identified at least 75 such cases.

The Plaintiffs in the MDNC case, as in the other actions, allege that the major domestic airlines conspired to raise the price of airline ...