Although the Supreme Court thoroughly quashed precertification damages caps in Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles, experts say the plaintiffs bar will likely continue to try to avoid federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA).        

One popular strategy that Standard Fire won't eliminate deals with CAFA's “mass action” provision, which allows defendants to remove to federal court civil actions “in which monetary relief claims of 100 or more persons are proposed to be tried jointly on the ground that the plaintiffs' claims involve common questions of law or fact.” To circumvent CAFA, plaintiffs lawyers will frequently divide hundreds of plaintiffs into groups with fewer than 100 plaintiffs and submit multiple, identical complaints.

Arnold & Porter Partner Steven Reade says that although the Supreme Court decided Standard Fire under CAFA's provisions for class actions and not mass actions, the court's emphasis on fulfilling congressional intent in its opinion could help curb such tactics going forward.