Must a plaintiff accept a defendant’s surrender? That is the question posed in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez, No. 14-857—indeed, expressly posed by an exasperated Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. at oral argument, when he upbraided the lead plaintiffs lawyer: “You won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.” In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether a defendant’s offer to provide complete relief to the named representative of a proposed class action moots both the representative’s individual claim and the claim of the proposed class. This case may significantly impact the landscape of future class-action litigation by determining whether a defendant may stifle putative class claims by “picking-off” the named plaintiff.

The court addressed a strikingly similar scenario two years ago in the context of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In Genesis Healthcare v. Symczyk, 133 S.Ct. 1523 (2013), the court held in a 5-4 decision that a defendant’s offer to provide all of the relief requested by the named plaintiff in a collective action mooted the plaintiff’s individual action and rendered her unable to bring the action on behalf of other claimants. (Disclosure: Cozen O’Connor represented the prevailing petitioner in that case.) The Campbell-Ewald case will determine whether that logic applies outside the FLSA context.

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