When the Class Action Fairness Act was passed ten years ago, many businesses breathed a collective sigh of relief.  No longer would the plaintiffs' bar be able to keep their cases in certain magnet jurisdictions (a/k/a "judicial hellholes") known for looking favorably on class action lawsuits.  Many of the cases now would be removable to federal courts, where defendants felt that they had a better chance for fair treatment...

As my colleague Don Frederico noted in his January 24th post, a divided First Circuit panel recently affirmed the district court’s class certification decision in In re Nexium Antitrust Litigation.  In so doing, the First Circuit weighed in on a critical issue that arises in many class cases:  is class certification proper where certain members of the class have not suffered injury?

The First Circuit’s split decision last week affirming class certification in the Nexium antitrust case is sure to receive much attention in product defect class actions.  Over the last several years, a chief battleground in such actions has been the import of the fact that many of the people that bought the particular product – indeed, often an overwhelming majority of those people – had no problem at all with it after many years of use...

In a November 30, 2013 post, we wrote about the District of Massachusetts' class certification decision in the antitrust case, In re Nexium.  There, the district court certified a class of c...

The United States Supreme Court held this week in Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co., LLCv Owens that defendants removing cases from state to federal court, including class action defendants...

In early 2001, I was asked to argue in opposition to a class certification motion in federal court on behalf of the prominent owner of an automobile distributorship.  The case was brought on...

In December 2008, a major ice storm caused massive and lengthy power outages in several towns in Massachusetts.  Twelve residential and business customers of Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light...

You represent the defendant in a putative wage and hour class action filed in state court, alleging that certain categories of employees were denied mandatory meal breaks.  The complaint doe...

This week I attended the annual Class Actions Seminar sponsored by DRI (the Defense Research Institute).  It was an excellent program, covering many recent trends in class action practice of...

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly has published a story about our recent First Circuit win.  You can find it here.