Robinson Bradshaw Files Amicus Brief Asking SCOTUS to Review Class-Certification Issues

Robinson Bradshaw filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Software & Information Industry Association. The brief asks the Court to grant a cert petition filed by Meta Platforms and review a Ninth Circuit decision that upends the settled understanding that class actions are difficult to certify in consumer-fraud cases.

In the decision at issue, the Ninth Circuit held that a consumer-fraud class action can be certified whenever the defendant engaged in a “common course of conduct” toward the class. That holding calls for Supreme Court review, the brief argues, because it waters down the predominance requirement in Rule 23(b)(3) and overlooks the many individualized questions that consumer-fraud claims present.

The brief also asks the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s asymmetric standard of appellate review for class-certification decisions — a standard that gives more deference to grants of class certification than to denials. That extra deference for decisions that grant class certification disregards the weighty impact of those decisions and the settlement pressures that they carry.

Taken together, the brief argues, the Ninth Circuit’s holdings on these issues will distort the judicial process in class-action cases and inflict serious harm on the business community.

Robinson Bradshaw attorneys Erik R. Zimmerman, Jordan T. DeJaco and Matthew S. Queen filed this amicus brief. A copy is available here.

A Law360 article about the brief, “Meta Ruling Will Fuel Class Actions, Chambers Warns Justices,” is available here.