Class Action & Mass Torts

Email Updates Blogs
Below is a link to the latest issue of the Jackson Lewis Class Action Trends Report.  This report is published on a quarterly basis by our firm’s class action practice group in conjunction with Wolters Kluwer.  We hope you will find this issue to be informative and insightful.  Using our considerable experience in defending hundreds of class actions over the last few years alone, we have generated another comprehensive, informative and timely piece with practice insights…
Text Product Recall appearing behind ripped brown paper.
On October 5, 2018, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that it had negotiated a $3.85 million civil penalty with Costco Wholesale Corporation over an alleged failure to report product hazards involving an electronic trash can, which CPSC alleged violated the Consumer Product Safety Act.…
ricky-kharawala-10194-unsplash
So implies Monsanto in the ongoing In RE Roundup litigation venued before Judge Chhabria in San Francisco, as well as a state-court consolidated filings in St. Louis, Missouri. To date, only one case has been tried and the case resulted in a $289 million verdict, which included a large punitive damages award for what the jury believed to be Monsanto’s punitive conduct regarding their knowledge of the carcinogenic potential when exposed to their Roundup…
Data breach plaintiffs often have a very difficult time stating a concrete injury, and courts have wrestled with whether these plaintiffs can file suit in federal court. We have been watching this issue and writing about it frequently. The issue is whether plaintiffs have suffered an “injury in fact” that gives them Article III standing. The Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Spokeo v. Robins took a narrow view of Article III standing where the…
Kendrick v. Xerox State and Local Solutions, Inc., et al., 18-cv-00213 (N.D. Cal. 2018). In granting plaintiffs’ motion to remand, a district court in California found that an action may be deemed a state action under section 1332(d)(5) if there is such a close nexus between the State and the challenged action that private behavior may be fairly treated as actions of the State. Plaintiffs brought a putative class action asserting state law claims…
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) settled an administrative lawsuit against Britax Child Safety, Inc. over claims that some models of their B.O.B. jogging strollers present a substantial product hazard due to an alleged design defect. As we previously reported, the suit was filed in February 2018 after reports that the front wheel of the strollers can detach during use if consumers don’t fully engage the quick-release mechanism for attaching the front wheels.…
A claim is brought against a large employer contending that, although personnel decisions are made locally, it discriminates in pay and promotions on the basis of sex nationwide. Sound familiar? That was, essentially, the claim in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), that the Supreme Court held should not have been certified. And seven years later, it was the claim the Southern District of New York has now refused to certify in…
By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Michael L. DeMarino Seyfarth Synopsis: Every year the American Tort Reform Association (“ATRA”) publishes its “Judicial Hellholes Report.” The Report focuses on litigation issues in state court systems and challenges for corporate defendants in the fair and unbiased administration of justice. The ATRA’s 2018 Report was recently published; find a copy here and the executive summary here. The Judicial Hellholes Report is an important read for corporate counsel…
The standards for determining when a party waives its right to arbitrate through participation in litigation have never been uniform among the circuits or easily applied. The recent Fifth Circuit opinion in Forby v. One Technologies, L.P. (Case No. 17-10883, decided Nov. 28, 2018) illustrates the difficulty of applying the “prejudice” requirement in a consumer fraud and unjust enrichment class action. In Forby, the district court found that: [w]hile . . . Forby has suffered…