In the proverb, the dog in the manger can't benefit from eating the feed he's found in the barn, but he snarls and bites at the other beasts who could digest it and will starve without it. If I can't get a meal, neither can any of you.
The story came to mind last week.
The wise thing for me to say . . . is that I don't have evidence to contradict it.
David Ingram, "Q&A: Plaintiffs' Lawyer Barry Barnett on the Comcast class action", Thomson Reuters News & Insight, May 13, 2013 (referring to "the academic study spotlighted in The New York Times that found
At the end of the one of the Best Movies Ever, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) drives with her young daughter towards safety down a Los Angeles street. Will they escape? Yes, we think they just might!
A Los Angeles police lieutenant (Perry Lopez) steps onto the pavement. He aims his pistol and fires. Mulwray's car
NYU Law School Professor Richard A. Epstein — "an advocate of minimal legal regulation" and "one of the most influential legal thinkers of modern times" — thinks the U.S. Supreme Court got its ruling wrong in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, No. 11-864 (U.S. Mar. 27, 2013) (post here).
Leaving to one side the
The legal landscape for class actions has gotten harder for plaintiffs to cross in the last decade or so. Today it got no worse. And plaintiffs and their counsel rejoice at that.
In Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds, No. 11-1085 (U.S. Feb. 27, 2013), the Court ruled 6-3 that a
The Supreme Court of Texas held last week that the courts below shouldn't have refused to certify a "takings" case as a class action on the ground that the class representatives couldn't adequately represent the interests of all class members. Riemer v. Patterson, No. 11-0548 (Tex. Feb. 22, 2013).
That doesn't amount to saying
Blawgletter has noted concerns about awarding money from class action judgments and settlements to non-class members by way of "cy pres" awards. See "Does Cy Pres Have a Prayer?". These payments aim to do the next best thing to paying the funds to the members of the class.
Such efforts become necessary fairly
The Second Circuit today upheld a district court's order barring class members in a federal class action from suing class counsel in a new state court action for botching the class case by settling for too little. The panel ruled that the "relitigation exception" to the federal Anti-Injunction Act (which, by the way, played a
Um.
Settling a class action case means you don't have to try it. But does making peace also mean you don't have to turn all the square corners of the class action rule, the one we call 23?
It does. Kind of. At least to the extent it avoids trial problems. The kind that could
The Fifth Circuit seldom affirms class certification orders. Can it stand class actions?
The court's ruling last week in Reed v. Florida Metro. Univ., No. 11-50509 (5th Cir. May 18, 2012), suggests not. The case dealt with the near-worthless degrees that Everest College sold — awarded — online and from store-front "campuses", where (per