Manatt Partner Participates in California Lawyer Roundtable Discussion
"2013 Roundtable Discussion - Class Actions"
California Lawyer
July 1, 2013 - California Lawyer invited Manatt's Brad Seiling, a partner in the firm's Litigation Division, to participate in its annual expert roundtable discussion on class actions. Published in the magazine's July 2013 issue, the discussion focused on the implications that major class action cases in the last year will have on future cases.
The first case that was addressed by the roundtable was Dukes v. Walmart, in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 denied class certification for 1.5 million female employees. When asked about the effects of the decision, Seiling replied:
"Pre Dukes, the position of defendants was-because these cases are very expensive to litigate-to try to keep the plaintiffs from getting into 'merits discovery' before certification. It's an artificial distinction anyway, but Dukes certainly blows that away and says merits do inform the decision on class certification.
I also think we're really going to have two very, very different systems in California over the next five or so years, with a much more rigorous analysis in the federal courts and something in the state courts that's like the good old days. So the question of how a defendant can get into federal court-or how a plaintiff can keep the case in state court-is going to be critically important."
Read the article here.