MVA Litigation Blog

The reality of class action litigation is that what is supposed to be the court’s preliminary decision of whether to certify a case as a class action is often the end of the litigation. In many cases, plaintiffs will not proceed if the court denies class certification for reasons including that their individual claims are not large enough to justify the costs. And defendant companies often will settle a case once a class is certified, even if the claims are meritless, because the risk and costs of litigation are too high. Therefore, the opportunity to appeal a class certification ...

COMPANIES DEFENDING CLASS ACTIONS IN NC HAVE NEW RIGHT TO APPEAL CLASS CERTIFICATION (June 4, 2017): The North Carolina legislature recently passed H.B. 239, over Gubernatorial veto, which gives company defendants the right to appeal trial court decisions allowing class certification directly to the North Carolina Supreme Court, securing a guaranteed avenue for early review of class action cases that was not available to companies in the North Carolina courts before and minimizing delays and costs associated with the two-step appellate process. Read more.

The North Carolina legislature recently passed H.B. 239, over Gubernatorial veto, which gives company defendants the right to appeal trial court decisions allowing class certification directly to the North Carolina Supreme Court. This law parts from North Carolina case law precedent and eliminates the need for the NC Supreme Court to invoke its supervisory authority to review a grant of class certification prior to resolution of a trial, as the court recently did in Fisher v. Flue-Cured Tobacco Coop. Stabilization Corp., 794 S.E.2d 699, 2016 N.C. LEXIS 1120, (NC Dec. 21, 2016 ...