In late 2011, the Colorado Supreme Court issued four seminal class action cases: Jackson v. Unocal Corp., 262 P.3d 874 (Colo. 2011), BP America Production Co. v. Patterson, 263 P.3d 103 (Colo. 2011), Garcia v. Medved Chevrolet Inc., 263 P.3d 92 (Colo. 2011), and State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Reyher, 266 P.3d 383 (Colo. 2011). These cases addressed issues of the burden of proof and evidentiary standards for class certification, merits-based inquiries in class certification hearings, and other sweeping rulings that affect class actions in all contexts. (See this January 2, 2010 CALD blog entry entitled Colorado Supreme Court Asks, Where’s the Beef?).
As one of the practitioners who has successfully defended class certification in Colorado since these opinions, Denver Partner Casie Collignon has been invited to be a panel speaker, along with Colorado Court of Appeals Judge John Webb and plaintiff’s class action attorney Jennifer Hunt, for the Colorado Bar Association’s Program Class Action Trends: What’s on the Horizon for Class Certification Proof. Ms. Collignon will use her experiences to address what is next for the class action practitioner in Colorado, how these rulings changed the landscape for class actions, and how evidence in class certification hearings will be presented in the years to come. The program will take place on July 30, 2012 at noon at the Colorado Bar Association.