The cast of Animal House (1978) toasts something other than the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.  Road trip, perhaps?

The Fourth Circuit held today that a counterclaim defendant, which stood on the receiving end of a class counterclaim for cheating consumers, doesn't have the right to remove a case from state to federal court under old law or even the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA).  The 2-1 decision upheld a West Virginia district court's order remanding the lawsuit to the Circuit Court of Brooke County, West Virginia.  Palisades Collections LLC v. Shorts, No. 08-2188 (4th Cir. Dec. 16, 2008).

(The counterclaim alleged that AT&T Mobility, as successor to Cingular Wireless, violated state consumer protection law by charging Ms. Short an early termination fee.)

The majority and dissenting opinions cite old cases — including one from 1850, another from 1900, and an additional one from 1941 — in support of their conflicting interpretations of The Law.  But the issue, as we perceive it, boils down to whether CAFA, by allowing "any" defendant to remove a case, extended the removal right to a defendant that joins a case as a result of a defendant's act of adding it as a counterclaim defendant.

Respectfully, Blawgletter highly doubts that Congress's use of "any defendant" in CAFA means "any defendant and any counterclaim-defendant".

Our partners Jonathan Bridges and Bill Merrill represented Ms. Shorts, by the way.  Good on them, we say.

  Our feed never charges early termination fees.  On account of it doesn't charge any fees at-all.