Class Action

AAA Website Offers Helpful Class Arbitration Resources

Posted on September 30, 2008
During a reception yesterday, I met Lance Tanaka, local Denver representative of the American Arbitration Association (AAA), who tipped me off to AAA’s class arbitrations page.  The site has several great public resources for anyone interested in class arbitration rules or cases, including: AAA’s general Commercial Arbitration and Mediation rules The Supplementary Rules for Class Arbitrations The organization’s Policies on Class Arbitrations Searchable [...

Seventh Circuit: TILA Rescission Claims Are Not Suitable for Class Action Treatment

Posted on September 26, 2008
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’s highly anticipated Truth In Lending Act (TILA) class action decision in Andrews v. Chevy Chase Bank, No. 07-1327 (7th Cir., Sept. 24, 2008) was finally issued Wednesday.  The court reversed the district court’s class certification decision and joined the First and Fifth Circuit Courts of Appeals in holding that the TILA’s rescision remedy (at the [...

Beware of Post-Certification Communications with Class Members

Posted on September 25, 2008
The blog Wait A Second!, which covers civil rights issues in the Second Circuit, posted a synopsis today of a recent New York federal court decision in which a class action defendant was sanctioned as a result of communications with class members following a class certification order...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on September 24, 2008
Here are some blog entries from the week that was that might be of interest to class action practitioners: Class Action Decisions The UCL Practitioner quotes a recent California Court of Appeal decision reversing a trial court’s order denying class certification on the ground that the court had not allowed pre-certification discovery of the identity of possible replacement [...

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UK Pension Funds an Increasingly Key Player in Securities Litigation Abroad, Association Reports

Posted on September 24, 2008
Wales Online reported today on the increasing number of UK pension funds taking part as a lead plaintiff or “active participant” in securities class actions, which have to be pursued in other countries since the UK does not currently have a class action procedure...

Climate Change and Class Actions

Posted on September 22, 2008
An article yesterday in the Australian newspaper The Age quotes Australian “climate change lawyer” Renee Garner as predicting a trend in securities class actions for companies’ failure to disclose information about their carbon output, information that she says will arguably impact on a company’s value given the likely implementation of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in Australia...

Shivar Me Timbarrs, The Alien Tort Claims Act Isn?t Just for Pirates Anymore

Posted on September 19, 2008
Ahoy, Maties!    In honour of Talk Like a Pirate Day, I’d lyke to present ye with a bit o’ pirate law trivia.  No, I’m not talking about software or media piracy.  I mean authentic buccaneers of the Blackbeard variety, aaaarrrrr. Did you know that the Alien Tort Claims Act, which has been used successfully over the past few years to [...

Will New Federal Rule of Evidence 502 Actually Reduce Litigation Costs?

Posted on September 18, 2008
Anyone who practices in the area of class actions is no doubt intimately familiar with the complex issues and potential pitfalls involved in the discovery of electronic data.  As reported by the National Law Journal (through Law.com), Congress has passed legislation designed to create a new Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 502, which is intended to [...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on September 17, 2008
Here are some blog entries from the week that was that might be of interest to class action practitioners: Class Action Decisions For a “brief” commentary on a case addressing the removability under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) of a class action counterclaim by a plaintiff/counterclaim defendant, see this guest commentary from Dallas attorney Jonathan Bridges on CAFA [...

5 Blogs & 5 Blawgers

Posted on September 10, 2008
“A good fortune may forebode bad luck, which may in turn disguise good fortune.”  - Chinese Proverb I’ve been sent the blogging equivalent of a chain letter.  The kind folks at Drug and Device Law Blog have tagged ClassActionBlawg.com with an Internet Meme (if you don’t know, click the link–It was the first I’d heard of such a thing)...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on September 10, 2008
Here are some blog entries from the week that was that might be of interest to class action practitioners: Class Action Decisions Law and Insurance discusses a recent Texas Supreme Court decision holding that a duty to defend was triggered in the context of class actions in which the plaintiffs argued that an alleged product defect in [...

Not So Fast: The Push to Internationalize Securities Class Actions Hits a Bump in the Rue

Posted on September 08, 2008
In late July, I commented on a possible trend in courts allowing foreign investors to be included as class members in securities class actions filed in U.S. courts.  At the time, the primary decision allowing foreign investors to be included in an opt-out securities class was In re Vivendi Universal, S...

Class Actions as a Weapon to Stifle Democracy?

Posted on September 08, 2008
A few weeks ago, I commented on legislation proposed in Korea that would allow people harmed by public protests to bring class action lawsuits against the protesters.  On Friday, progressive Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh published an editorial criticising the proposal as anti-democratic effort to squelch peaceful dissent...

Technically Speaking, You don?t ?Join? a Class Action

Posted on September 04, 2008
As someone who reads a lot of news articles about class action lawsuits, I see a lot of technical misstatements by the media in reporting on the mechanics of class action procedure.  To most casual readers, these errors may not be that important to the overall story about a particular lawsuit, so the distinctions that I [...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on September 02, 2008
Here are some blog entries from the week that was that might be of interest to class action practitioners: Class Action Decisions The UCL Practitioner provides a summary of recent decisions in several U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals involving the standards for approving class action settlements and fee awards...

Claims-Made Settlements In Consumer Class Actions

Posted on June 12, 2008
This article on claims-made settlements appeared originally in the guest column section of the March 10, 2008 issue of ProductLiabilityLaw360.  Under the submission guidelines, I retain copyrights to the article, but I was required to wait at least three months before reprinting the article elsewhere...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on June 11, 2008
Here are some blog postings from the week that was that might be of interest to class action practitioners.  The topic headings may or may not be a permanent addition to this weekly column.  They made sense this week given logical groupings in the topics being discussed around the blogosphere...

Class Action Lawyers Losing their ?Good Guy? Image?

Posted on June 10, 2008
Washington Post columnist has David Ignatius published a great op-ed last week regarding the downfalls of high-profile plaintiffs’ class action lawyers Melvyn Weiss and Dickie Scruggs.  The column appears in the June 5 edition of the Post under the title Reining in the Kings of Tort and in the June 6 edition of the Indianapolis [...

Check out this great directory of online legal research tools

Posted on June 06, 2008
Genie Tyburski, a law librarian for the firm of Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll and web manager for the site www.virtualchase.com, has put together a nice list of online legal research tools available for litigators entitled “10 Essential Web Sites for Litigators...

Get The ?Official? Perspective on CAFA Notice to Appropriate Government Officials

Posted on June 05, 2008
The Class Actions, Derivative Suits, and Mass Torts subsection of the Colorado Bar Association has scheduled its inaugural CLE luncheon for June 25, 2008 at noon at the CBA offices in Denver.  The topic will be “appropriate” government official notification of federal class action settlements under the Class Action Fairness Act, 28 U...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on June 04, 2008
It’s that time of the week already.  Here are some blog postings from the past week that might be of interest to class action practitioners.  The fallout from several plaintiffs’ class action corruption scandals took center stage in the class action blogosphere this week...

Did You Ever Wonder Where Class Actions Came From?

Posted on June 03, 2008
If you are new to class action law or even if you are a seasoned class action practitioner, you may be curious about the origins and history of class actions.  Below you will find a sampling of articles available on the Internet that trace the history of class actions from medieval England to the 1966 amendment to [...

CBA Class Action Subsection Update

Posted on May 30, 2008
Last night we held our first official event of the newly formed Class Actions, Derivative Suits, and Mass Torts Subsection of the Colorado Bar Association’s Litigation Section.  A dozen or so class action and mass tort lawyers from around the Denver metro area attended our cocktail function, and by all accounts the event was a [...

I Hear their Toilets Also Flush in the Opposite Direction

Posted on May 29, 2008
I came across this article today from Australian news outlet The Age regarding proposed class action reforms being considered in the Australian Federal Court.  Among the possible reforms reportedly being considered is a measure “restricting an appeal on an interlocutory issue until the entire case is heard...

Class Action Blogosphere Weekly Review

Posted on May 28, 2008
Here are some blog entries of interest to class action practitioners from the week that was. It’s been a big week for blog postings on CAFA removal decisions… … after a bit of a hiatus, CAFA Law Blog is back with a rollicking review of the latest in CAFA removal decisions from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals [...

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