Since the United States Supreme Court decided Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2451 (2011), plaintiffs in contamination cases have struggled to meet the raised bar for class certification.  And that bar was certainly not lowered by the Seventh Circuit in its decision in Parko v. Shell Oil Co., Nos. 13-8023 & 13-8024 (7^th Cir. Jan 17, 2014).  Parko involved a putative class comprised of property owners in the town of Roxana, Illinois, who claimed that their property values had been diminished by benzene contamination of the groundwater from an adjacent oil refinery which had been in operation for nearly 100 years.  In checking off the certification requirements, the district court held that the question of whether the multiple defendants who owned and operated the refinery during the preceding 90 plus years failed to “contain petroleum byproduct [resulting] in contamination to Roxana property” predominated.   The Seventh Circuit panel unanimously disagreed.  Judge Posner, writing for the Court, described the opinion as necessary for clarification of a trial court’s responsibility to conduct a “rigorous analysis” of whether common issues predominate; in doing so, he did not hesitate to take the district judge to task for “treat[ing] predominance as a pleading requirement” rather than an evidentiary one.  Read More »

Share | Email| Comments|  Topics: Causation, Certification, Class Actions, Contamination, Dukes, Expert Witness, Illinois, Procedure, Real Estate, Residential, Seventh Circuit, Toxic Torts, Water

Both before and after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2451 (2011), removal to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”) was a key tool in the arsenal employed by class action defendants, as federal courts have become increasingly more skeptical of certifying classes in toxic tort class actions.  But with many state court procedural rules patterned after their federal counterparts, federal trends can influence state courts, and the recent Louisiana Supreme Court decision in Price v. Roy R. Martin, 2011-C-0853 (Dec. 6, 2011), is a perfect example. Read More »

Share | Email| Comments|  Topics: Certification, Class Actions, Contamination, Decisions of Note, Dukes, Louisiana, Real Estate, Toxic Torts