Recent years have seen federal courts applying increased scrutiny to proposed “multistate” class actions that invoke a hodgepodge of state consumer-protection laws. The main reason: The variations among these state laws are not only extensive but often case-determinative, preventing class representatives from proving their claims on a classwide basis.
These decisions have, in turn, raised another question that has divided judges, commentators, and practitioners: Does the same high bar apply to the certification of nationwide classes that are purely vehicles for settlement—meaning that the court will never have to address the practical and legal difficulties of managing an actual classwide trial involving fifty (or more) state laws? In late January the Ninth Circuit weighed in to answer that it does, in a potentially seminal opinion that could, in the words of one dissenting judge, strike a “major blow” to multistate class action settlements.