2022 was, in our estimation, a good year, including for class-action practice in North Carolina’s courts. All in all, 2022 gave us one important opinion from the North Carolina Supreme Court concerning Rule 23 as well as several court of appeals opinions concerning issues important to class-action practice, such as […]
In Dewalt v. Hooks, 2022-NCSC-105, 879 S.E.2d 179, the North Carolina Supreme Court recently illustrated the difficulty in finding commonality between several fact-specific Constitutional claims for the purposes of certifying a class. The Supreme Court relied primarily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 […]
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, […]