Last week, in Abdallah v. Bain Capital LLC, United States District Judge Joseph L. Tauro of the District of Massachusetts dismissed a putative class action lawsuit against Bain Capital LLC b…
In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Sandra Lynch that could, and should, find its way into civil procedure casebooks, the First Circuit charted a course through the complexities of the E…
In an April 30th post, we described the First Circuit’s recent decision in In re: Lupron Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation, in which the court for the first time articulated the stand…
Twombly, Iqbal and Class Allegations
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In 2007 and 2008, the United States Supreme Court issued landmark decisions clarifying the pleading standards that must be met for a complaint to survive a motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Ci…
Last week, on the one-year anniversary of Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011), a group of Democratic lawmakers proposed companion House and Senate bills that would repeal Dukes’…
Machado v. System4
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As previously reported, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will be reviewing the continued vitality of its decision in Feeney v. Dell Inc. (Feeney I), governing the enforceability of c…
The Continuing Saga of Class Action Waivers in Massachusetts
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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has agreed to re-review a case involving the enforceability of class action waivers in arbitration provisions in light of last term’s United States S…
CAFA Jurisdiction and Pleading Consumer Injury
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In a case that sheds some light on how the court handles allegations of subject matter jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act, and how it applies the heightened pleading standards…
The First Circuit and Cy Pres
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In 2009, the First Circuit held, as a matter of first impression, that class action settlement agreements may, in appropriate circumstances, include provisions for cy pres distributions. In…
Comcast Corp. v. Behrend: A Question of Balance
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It isn’t complicated. A majority of the Supreme Court holds that, where an expert’s model will not prove damages on a classwide basis, “[q]uestions of individual damage calculations will in…