On October 7, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision that blocked the right of out-of-state defendants to remove lawsuits from state court to federal court when the suit involves numerous plaintiffs. The decision was a setback for WLF, which urged the Court to hear the case. WLF argued that the appeals court’s decision remanding a massive products-liability proceeding back to state court was inconsistent with the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), a 2005 law designed to permit removal of virtually all large class action lawsuits into federal court. The appeals court held that the suit did not qualify as a “mass action” and thus was not subject to CAFA, but WLF argued that Congress intended CAFA to apply whenever, as here, the state-court proceedings combine the claims of 100 or more plaintiffs. WLF argued that CAFA was designed to prevent precisely the sorts of gamesmanship employed by plaintiffs’ attorneys in this case to defeat federal jurisdiction.
Documents:
