This column focuses on two recent class action decisions. One, by the Seventh Circuit, was issued on May 2 so it is virtually “hot off the press.” It concerns the Ford Explorer and Bridgestone/Firestone Tire multidistrict litigation (MDL) which, for now, is concentrated in a federal court in Indiana. The second opinion of note is the Frank case by the Appellate Division, First Department, issued at the end of March. This litigation involved a claim against auto industry members that their vehicle seats could collapse rearward in rear-end collisions. Both appellate determinations firmly turned away insistent plaintiffs who ardently knocked on the class action door, thereby teaching us something about enforcing boundaries in this form of litigation.
The writer’s last intensive foray into the class action thicket was the May 8, 1995 New York Law Journal article, “Class Action Imbroglios,”[1]� which reported on the requirements for class action treatment; the controversy as to whether they are good or bad (e.g., the device has been hailed as the “great equalizer” and denounced as an “engine of destruction”); the race to the courthouse by competing attorneys; vices, flaws and dangers in not applying tight standards; and the incisive opinion by Judge Richard A. Posner in the famous Rhone-Poulenc case,[2]� re-evaluating the wisdom of placing all claimants’ eggs in one super-litigation basket. Because our aim here is to move forward with the new developments, readers not familiar with class action requirements or tensions can review the prior article.
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