Earlier this year, in Bellon v. The PPG Employee Life & Other Benefits Plan, 41 F.4th 244 (4th Cir. 2022), the Fourth Circuit remanded a decision from the Northern District of West Virginia addressing whether a class of retirees and their spouses may recover […]
As the calendar approaches the middle of the year, it is a good time to review the Fourth Circuit’s recent class-action decisions—and there have been a number of them. These opinions offer guidance on five key topics in class-action litigation, including numerosity, ascertainability, commonality, the rights and burdens of objectors, […]
Much like COVID-19 itself, a pandemic of class-action litigation has spread across this nation between two age-old foes: prisons, and their prisoners. Unlike most of the litigation arising from COVID-19 across the country, prisoners are taking a unique legal position: the failure of the government to take precautions against COVID-19 […]
In Cherry v. Dometic Corp., 986 F.3d 1296 (11th Cir. Feb. 2, 2021), the Eleventh Circuit furthered the divide among the circuits as to whether putative class representatives must prove the existence of an administratively feasible method to identify absent class members as a precondition for class certification. Ultimately, the […]