Ten years have passed since the February 18, 2005 enactment of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA). Attorneys braced themselves for the vast expansion of federal court jurisdiction and settlement hurdles that the act would bring.
Ten years later, CAFA is a necessary tool among class action litigators faced with deciding important questions:
• Where should I file my client’s class action?
• Can I remove a class action that has been filed against my client?
• We reached a settlement of a class action. Now what?
This article spells out the fundamentals of this statutory scheme—the basics that any class action litigator needs to know before embarking on her or his first class action case.