A recent decision on class certification by a New Jersey federal court addressed commonality and predominance in a manner that may have significant implications for health insurance class actions generally, and its impact could extend more broadly to other insurance class actions.  Franco v. Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Case No. 07-cv-6039 (SRC) (PS)

In a title insurance class action, the Fifth Circuit recently illustrated one method of applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes:  Analyze separately each question that the named plaintiffs propose as a  common question of law or fact.  Determine whether it is actually a proper question that a judge would decide as

How is a district court supposed to apply the Supreme Court’s opinion in Wal-Mart v. Dukes?  Dive deeply into the specifics of the plaintiff’s causes of action, the defendant’s defenses and the relevant facts.  A more general, broad brush analysis will not do.  That was the message delivered by the Fifth Circuit fairly strongly

A recent certification of a class against CIGNA in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is a good example of the type of issue on which insurers may continue to have significant class action exposure following the Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart (see my blog post on Wal-Mart).  This decision has received fairly extensive coverage

I recently came across the first class certification ruling I’ve seen in an insurance case since the Supreme Court decided Wal-Mart (see my prior blog post).  The court strongly applied the new standard for commonality and found a lack of commonality, even though the same judge had previously found most of the class certification

Class action law has changed.  Nearly every brief and decision on class certification will now cite the Supreme Court’s opinion in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the Court’s most important decision on class actions in decades.  It substantially raises the bar for plaintiffs to obtain class certification in all types of class actions, and