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Sarah Abrams

Securities class action lawsuits in the U.S. are very much subject to the rules of civil procedure regarding class action certification. In the following guest post, Sarah Abrams, Head of Claims Baleen Specialty, a division of Bowhead Specialty, examines a recent district court class action certification decision and considers its implication. I would like to thank Sarah for allowing me to publish her article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this site’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Sarah’s article. Continue Reading Failure to Launch

Class actions are of course well-established in the United States, but class action litigation has never been as well-developed in the UK. Among a number of reasons for this arguably is the lack of an “opt-out” class action procedure in the UK. However, as detailed in an interesting July 2019 memo by Colin Hutton of the CMS law firm entitled “Opt-Out Class Actions in the UK: Are We Entering a New Era in Litigation?” (here), several recent developments suggest that there may be “gradual but significant changes that may well alter the litigation culture in the UK permanently.”
Continue Reading Are We Entering a New Class Actions Era in the UK?

eu flagIn prior posts (for example, here), I have described the rise of collective investor actions outside of the U.S. as one of the most important current developments in the world of directors and officers liability. The rise of these collective investor suits is not happening in a vacuum; the growth in the number and size of these kinds of lawsuits is part of a larger upsurge in collective actions generally. According to a recent Report, collective redress actions represent a “growing business” in Europe, and the “volume and value of the cases being filed is on a steep upward curve.”

The Report, a detailed and interesting March 2017 publication by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute of Legal Reform entitled “The Growth of Collective Redress in the EU: A Survey of Developments in 10 Member States” (here) takes an anxious and uneasy look at the changes in the collective action environment in Europe, and proposes several recommendations as ways for countries to avoid abuses that the report contends have arisen elsewhere.  The Institute’s March 21, 2017 press release about the report can be found here.
Continue Reading The Steep Rise of Collective Actions in Europe

supremesAfter the Supreme Court issued its decision last week in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez (here), in at least some quarters the story about the decision spread under the heading that the Court had issued an important Telephone Consumer Protection Act ruling. The case in which the Court issued its decision does indeed involve a TCPA damages claim. However, the Court’s analysis did not address the plaintiff’s TCPA claim as such. The Court’s ruling – which addressed the issue of whether or not an unaccepted offer of judgment moots a class action plaintiff’s claim – is nevertheless important.

As discussed below, the Court’s ruling in the Campbell-Ewald case sets the stage for further litigation on the question of whether, by taking a different approach than the defendant did here, class action defendants might yet be able to moot a class action suit by “picking off” the named plaintiff’s claim. The Court’s decision in the Campbell-Ewald case may also prefigure the Court’s consideration of standing issues in the Spokeo case, another case that raises basic justiciability issues and that remains pending on the Court’s docket for this term.  
Continue Reading Why the Supreme Court’s Recent Class Action Decision is Important and What May Be Coming Next

In a May 13, 2013 order (here), Southern District of New York Judge Shira Scheindlin granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the Libor-scandal related securities suit that had been filed against Barclays and two of its former executives following the company’s entry into a massive Libor-related settlement last summer. The suit’s dismissal is just…

Although the class action lawsuit is most often associated with the litigious legal culture in the United States, the fact is that in recent years class action and other group litigation procedures have been expanding around the world. Forces of globalization and the rise of organized groups of aggrieved claimants have encourage a host of…