Anyone asked to choose between receiving more money versus receiving less money would probably choose the obvious: more money. So, when the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California lacked structure for calculating attorneys’ fees, class counsel gingerly sought to secure a generous payday after obtaining a measly, […]
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 […]
