Case Updates
Arkansas Supreme Court affirms certification of multistate class
June 19, 2008
The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the circuit court’s order granting certification of a class of 4,000,000 truck owners, concluding that it is not necessary for an Arkansas court to conduct a choice-of-law analysis to determine whether a class is manageable enough for certification. The Court also found that, although there were at least thirteen individualized factual inquiries that a court would need to make regarding each plaintiff, the individualized factual questions were insufficient to decertify the class.
U.S. Chamber files amicus brief
June 25, 2007
NCLC urged the Arkansas Supreme Court to reverse the trial court’s decision to certify a class without conducting a choice-of-law analysis and in the face of significant factual variations among the class members’ claims. In this case, the putative class representatives argue that GM defrauded purchasers of certain vehicles when it failed to warn them about a parking brake defect. In its brief, NCLC argued that had the trial court conducted the proper choice-of-law analysis, it would have found the proposed fifty-state class unmanageable. NCLC also pointed out that there were individualized questions of causation and reliance, which undermined any claim that the proposed class satisfied the commonality requirement.