HeplerBroom Attorneys Receive an Important Class Action Fairness Act Victory

HeplerBroom attorneys, Gerard T. Noce, W. Jason Rankin, Beth A. Bauer, and M. Elizabeth Kellett, working with their co-counsel, received an important Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) victory in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on behalf of a medical device manufacturing client. The Eighth Circuit held that three cases were removable pursuant to CAFA, despite the fact that each individual case had fewer than 100 plaintiffs, because plaintiffs’ request that these cases be assigned to a single judge for consistency of rulings, judicial economy, and administration of justice equated to a request for these cases to be “tried jointly” under CAFA’s mass action provision.