Class Action

Rare Balance Among New Class Action Filings But Employment-Related Class Action Lawsuits Maintain Top Spot Of Weekly Class Action Suits Filed In California State And Federal Courts

By Michael J. Hassen

As a resournce for California class action defense attorneys, we provide weekly, unofficial summaries of the legal categories for new class action lawsuits filed in the California state and federal courts located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, San Diego, San Mateo, Oakland/Alameda and Orange County areas. We include only those categories that include 10% or more of the class action filings during the preceding week. This report covers the period from February 6 - 12, 2009, during which time 35 new class action lawsuits were filed. Generally, labor law class actions top the list of new class action filings by a wide margin, and it is rare that the top two categories have approximately the same number of new filings. This past week, however, there was remarkable balance among the categories of class action lawsuits. Specifically, four categories of class action cases were separated by only 8 filings. Labor law class actions again came in on top, but with only 13 new filings (37% of the total number of new class actions filed during the past week). Three other categories satisfied the 10% threshold: there were 8 class actions alleging violations of California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL), which includes false advertising claims (23%), there were 6 new class actions alleging violations of federal antitrust (17%), and there were 5 class actions alleging violations of federal securities laws (14%).

Full post as published by Class Action Defense Blog on February 14, 2009 (boomark / email).