Wal-Mart v. Dukes

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After Wal-Mart v. Dukes, some commentators have suggested that plaintiffs’ attorneys are likely to file more class actions seeking exclusively declaratory or injunctive relief, on the theory that it might be easier to obtain certification of those cases.  Prof. Jack Coffee of Columbia Law School has suggested this, as I noted in my October…

Classes can still be certified post-Wal-Mart, even in large employment discrimination cases.  That seemed to be the message delivered by Judge Posner in his opinion for the Seventh Circuit in McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., No. 11-3639, slip op. (7th Cir. Feb. 24, 2012).  The Seventh Circuit found…

The Sixth Circuit recently ruled in a health insurance case that a claim for a declaratory judgment regarding insurance contract interpretation could be certified under Rule 23(b)(2) under Wal-Mart v. Dukes, even if the declaratory relief would be a predicate to monetary relief, under which certification was sought under Rule 23(b)(3) but not yet…

Issues regarding the use of statistical evidence at trial of a class action were recently addressed by the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, in Duran v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n, 2012 Cal. App. LEXIS 107 (Cal. Ct. App. Feb. 6, 2012).  The court concludes that the trial of an employment class action…

Regular readers of my blog may recall that my post last week about the ABA Premier Speaker Series webinar on class actions described how Mark Perry had made an interesting point that courts should focus more intently on Rule 23(c)(1)(B).  This is a sometimes overlooked subsection of Rule 23 that requires an order certifying a…

Earlier this week I attended the ABA’s national webinar entitled “The Future of Class Actions,” part of its Premier Speaker Series.  The panelists were Paul Bland of Public Justice, Mark Perry of Gibson Dunn and Judge Lee Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas.  Here is what I found most interesting: 

  • Paul Bland, the plaintiffs-side

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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…