Washington Legal Foundation Publishes Akin Gump Article on Defeating Class Actions

April 21, 2017

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Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Backgrounder has published the article “Defeating Class Actions: When to Target Plaintiffs’ Standing Claims and Damages Models,” written by Akin Gump litigation partner Neal Marder, counsel Ali Rabbani and associate Kelly Handschumacher. The article discusses two recent trends in defending against the surge in class-action filings.

First, the authors note, are attacks on standing. They write that, where class actions “are based only on statutory violations, defendants have had considerable success in getting those actions dismissed for lack of Article III standing.” They cite the Supreme Court decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins in support of this, in which the Court held that to have standing “a plaintiff must show, among other factors, that he has suffered an ‘injury in fact’—that is, an injury that is both ‘concrete and particularized.’”

The second trend cited by Marder, Rabbani and Handschumacher is attacks on damages. They discuss Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, a Supreme Court decision that “reversed class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) where the plaintiffs’ damages model fell ‘far short of establishing that damages are capable of measurement on a classwide basis.’” The ruling, they write, provides “an effective tool for class action defendants in defeating class certification.”

For more on the topic, click here to read the full article.

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