Class Action Litigation

A suit in which one or more named plaintiffs ask to represent everyone similarly situated, so that a judgment or settlement binds people who never appeared. Under Rule 23 the court must find the class numerous, its questions common, its representatives typical and adequate, and, for a damages class, that common questions predominate and a class action is superior to individual suits. Members of a damages class receive notice and may opt out; members of an injunctive class may not. The certification order defines who is in, and from that day the exposure is the class's, not the plaintiff's.

Defendants. Our clients are the companies, boards and funds named in putative class and aggregate matters, and the individuals named alongside them. We also advise before any complaint on the arbitration clauses and class waivers that decide whether a class can be brought at all, and on the disclosure, pricing and data practices that most often generate one. The practice is defense-side only, so no plaintiffs' bar relationship sits across the table from a client's interest.

Because it converts one plaintiff's claim into everyone's. Before certification the defendant faces a single claim and can settle it without court approval; after certification it faces the aggregate, and any settlement needs notice, a fairness hearing and the court's approval under Rule 23(e). The ruling is made on evidence, usually after expert discovery, and it can be appealed within 14 days under Rule 23(f) if the court of appeals agrees to hear it. A denial does not end the matter: tolling stops, and the individual suits begin.

Related federal cases are centralized by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation before a single transferee judge for pretrial proceedings under 28 U.S.C. § 1407, on a motion any party can file. The transferee court manages common discovery, rules on the common motions and typically tries bellwether cases by consent; the statute otherwise requires remand to the original districts for trial. State-court cases cannot be transferred into an MDL, so parallel state proceedings are coordinated by agreement and by protective orders that let one production serve both. We run the company's defense across all of it as one matter, with locally admitted counsel where a forum requires it.

No, and the sequence matters more than the instinct. A settlement with the named plaintiff alone before certification needs no court approval but binds no one else. A class-wide settlement must be found fair, reasonable and adequate under Rule 23(e)(2), after notice to the class, the chance to object or opt out, and a hearing, and it cannot receive final approval until 90 days after the state and federal attorneys general have been served with it. Terms that invite objectors, among them a reversion to the defendant or a fee out of proportion to what the class actually receives, cost more in delay than they save. We price the alternatives, including contesting certification and trying the case, before the first number is spoken.

Three things in particular. The settlement must be served on the attorney general of every state with a resident class member, so a private resolution becomes a regulatory briefing, and the class notice itself is a public document that the trade press reads. A certified class judgment binds the company as to every absent member, and findings made along the way can be used against it in the next case. And the insurance program has its own rules: a consent-to-settle clause means the carrier is brought along before the number is agreed, and late notice can forfeit coverage. We manage all three alongside the docket, because they outlast it.