MVA Litigation Blog

The reality of class action litigation is that what is supposed to be the court’s preliminary decision of whether to certify a case as a class action is often the end of the litigation. In many cases, plaintiffs will not proceed if the court denies class certification for reasons including that their individual claims are not large enough to justify the costs. And defendant companies often will settle a case once a class is certified, even if the claims are meritless, because the risk and costs of litigation are too high. Therefore, the opportunity to appeal a class certification ...

COMPANIES DEFENDING CLASS ACTIONS IN NC HAVE NEW RIGHT TO APPEAL CLASS CERTIFICATION (June 4, 2017): The North Carolina legislature recently passed H.B. 239, over Gubernatorial veto, which gives company defendants the right to appeal trial court decisions allowing class certification directly to the North Carolina Supreme Court, securing a guaranteed avenue for early review of class action cases that was not available to companies in the North Carolina courts before and minimizing delays and costs associated with the two-step appellate process. Read more.

The North Carolina legislature recently passed H.B. 239, over Gubernatorial veto, which gives company defendants the right to appeal trial court decisions allowing class certification directly to the North Carolina Supreme Court. This law parts from North Carolina case law precedent and eliminates the need for the NC Supreme Court to invoke its supervisory authority to review a grant of class certification prior to resolution of a trial, as the court recently did in Fisher v. Flue-Cured Tobacco Coop. Stabilization Corp., 794 S.E.2d 699, 2016 N.C. LEXIS 1120, (NC Dec. 21, 2016 ...

Most of the cases that come to mind when you think “class action” consist of a large group of plaintiffs (hundreds or multiple thousands) seeking authorization to proceed as a class in one lawsuit against one or a handful of defendants. It is the rare case in which a large group of defendants are certified as a class in order to facilitate resolution of one plaintiffs’ claims against them. Rare though it may be, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a) does explicitly allow for the certification of defendant classes if the prerequisites for class certification (numerosity ...

After many years of battle, Whirlpool Corporation finds itself celebrating a favorable jury verdict in a class action lawsuit. A few weeks ago, a jury had the rare occasion to find for Whirlpool in Glazer v. Whirlpool Corp. (In re Whirlpool Corp. Front-Loading Washer Prods. Liability Litg.), No. 08-65000 (N.D. Ohio), one of several cases in which the company faces product liability allegations associated with mold growth in front-loading washing machines. The harsh reality for corporate defendants is that once a class is certified, the majority of cases settle because the ...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Family Dollar Stores, Inc.’s petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Scott, et. al. v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., No. 12-1610 (4th Cir. Oct., 16, 2013).  The Fourth Circuit had overturned the District Court’s decision to deny plaintiff’s motion to amend its employment discrimination-based class action complaint on the grounds that “as a matter of law plaintiffs cannot satisfy the Rule 23(a) commonality requirement because the alleged gender discrimination was a result of 'subjective ...

            Several opinions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court during the past few years have made it more difficult for plaintiffs to obtain class certification.  Despite the hurdles erected by the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011) which has been seen to raise the bar for establishing the commonality necessary to obtain class certification, and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 569 U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1426 (2013) which addressed the class certification predominance requirement, cases like In re: Whirlpool Corp. Front-Loading Washer Products ...

             The U.S. Supreme Court’s review of Comcast v. Behrend, 655 F.3d 182 (3rd Cir. 2011) showed promise to resolve uncertainties raised by the lower courts regarding the applicability of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S. Ct. 2786 (1993) at the class certification stage and the depth of analysis courts should apply to expert evidence under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23’s rigorous analysis.  We first discussed Comcast in August 2012, after the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the Third Circuit’s decision upholding certification of a ...

            While several of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions have raised the bar for plaintiffs seeking to bring class actions, the divided Court’s February 27th decision in Amgen, Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, 568 U.S. ___ (2013) dealt a blow to corporate defendants in the securities fraud class action arena.  The Court heard arguments in Amgen in November, 2012 on the issue of whether plaintiffs in securities fraud class actions must prove the materiality of the alleged misrepresentation in order to obtain class certification based on the ...