Cutting Class: When Cafa Changed the Class Action Landscape, It Also Created a Host of Considerations for Corporate Counsel (Litigation‪)‬

Looking to weaken the field of magnet jurisdictions and dial down the heat of judicial hellholes, five years ago last month the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) took effect, creating a federal forum for most significant class actions, which previously were often brought--and would remain--in state court. [paragraph] To the extent CAFA's primary goal was to move significant class actions out of state courts, the class action bar says it has worked out as Congress intended. [paragraph] Although five years is short to form a final judgment on the act's effectiveness, the Federal Judicial Center has tracked federal filings of diversity of citizenship class actions--cases plaintiffs could have chosen to file in either state or federal court. In an interim release comparing data from CAFA's first two years, from 2005 to 2007, to the immediate pre-CAFA period beginning in 2001, the FJC found plaintiffs filed as original proceedings in federal courts an average of roughly 300 more cases per year--an increase to 34.5 such filings per month from the previous average of 11.9 per month.