Cross-posted from Tort Deform
by Brian Wolfman, Director of Public Citizen Litigation Group
Today, I’m writing about the relationship between the so-called Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) and the attack on the consumer class action and consumer law more generally. CAFA was enacted in February 2005 for the fundamental purpose of bringing virtually all substantial class actions based on state law into federal court. State-law class actions can now be filed in, or removed to, federal court based on minimal diversity of the parties, not the ordinary complete diversity rule. Under CAFA, there are a few situations in which the minimal diversity may not apply – for more or less "local controversies"– but they can only be invoked, at a minimum, if the main defendant is a citizen of the forum state, which is rarely the case with large corporations, whose corporate "citizenship" often has nothing to do with where it does business.
