Over the past year, the Fourth Circuit has issued three decisions on class certification—all of which either affirmed certification or reversed and remanded to the district court to rule on certification. The opinions show the Fourth Circuit applying key principles in class-action practice, including mootness and the relation-back exception, standing […]
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 […]
The past few years have been eventful when it comes to class-action incentive awards. As 2022 comes to an end, it is a good time to take stock of the state of the circuit split on incentive awards—in anticipation of what 2023 may bring. As the Best in Class blog […]
