In the recently published decision Mazza v. American Honda
Motor Company, Inc., No. 09-55376 (9th Cir. 1-12-12), the Ninth
Circuit reversed the certification of a nationwide class composed
of consumers seeking relief under California's consumer
protection laws. In doing so, the court significantly decreased the
viability of such nationwide classes, particularly when the
plaintiff seeks to recover under any particular state's
consumer protection statutes.
In Mazza, the plaintiff sought to represent a class
composed of certain purchasers of the Acura RL automobile. On the
Acura RL, an available option was the Collision Mitigation Braking
System ("CMBS"), costing roughly $4,000. According to
Honda, the CMBS involved a three-step process whereby sensors in
the car would trigger alarms and apply increasing brake pressure to
alert drivers to possible accidents and, then, reduce injuries if
the accident could not be avoided....
Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author.
The attorney-client privilege only protects communications primarily motivated by the client's need for legal advice. It should go without saying that simply "cc'ing" a lawyer on an email does not satisfy this demanding standard.
There is an age-old axiom that still rings true in this digital age: do not publish or write anything, whether on paper or in cyberspace, that you would not want blown up and presented to a jury in court.
The early stages of large litigations have long been consumed by manual document review—namely—junior lawyers who spend weeks or months culling through mountains of documents at great expense to the client.
On April 25, 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") charged a former Managing Director in Morgan Stanley's Chinese real estate investment and fund advisory group with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Your Sunday School teacher always taught you to say your prayers, right? Well, the Supreme Court of Texas recently taught a litigant to say her prayers RIGHT. And the lesson was an expensive one.
A putative class action complaint has just been filed against a large company. After distributing a legal hold, the general counsel considers who should be in charge of the eventual collection of documents, including electronically stored information (ESI), when the collection process should begin, and how the collection process should operate in order to be efficient and effective.
In our June 2011 Newsletter, we discussed the status of important pending legislation in Pennsylvania (the Fair Share Act) designed to eradicate the common law doctrine of joint and several liability.
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