The Seventh Circuit has resolved a conflict between district court decisions about whether a motion to consolidate and transfer related state court cases to one circuit court constitutes a proposal to try the cases jointly triggers the “mass action” provision of the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”).  The court held that plaintiffs’ motion to consolidate did propose a joint trial, and thus removal was proper. See In re Abbott Laboratories Inc., No. 12-8020 (7th Cir. 10/16/12).

Between August 2010 and November 2011, several hundred plaintiffs filed ten lawsuits in three different Illinois state courts for personal injuries they alleged were caused by Depakote, a prescription medication.  Later, plaintiffs moved the Supreme Court of Illinois to consolidate and
transfer their cases to one venue, St. Clair County. In the memorandum in support of their motion, plaintiffs indicated they were requesting consolidation of the cases through trial and not solely for pretrial proceedings. Defendant removed each of the cases to federal court (in two districts) asserting that the motion to consolidate brought the cases under CAFA’s “mass action” provision, which allows the removal of any case where 100 or more people propose to try their claims jointly. Plaintiffs moved to remand in both courts.

The Southern District granted the motion to remand, concluding that the language in the motion to consolidate did not propose a joint trial. The Northern District court denied plaintiffs’ motion to
remand, noting that the motion to consolidate clearly sought to consolidate the 10 complaints for all purposes, including for purposes of conducting a trial.  Plaintiffs argued on appeal that they did not specifically propose a joint trial because their motion to consolidate did not address how the trials of the various claims in the cases would be conducted, other than proposing that they all take
place in St. Clair County. In plaintiffs’ view, for the mass action provision to apply, they would have needed to take the further step of requesting a joint trial or an exemplar trial that would affect the remaining cases.

The court of appeals noted that plaintiffs argued that they never specifically asked for a joint trial, but a proposal for a joint trial can be implicit. See Bullard v. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway
Co., 535 F.3d 759 (7th Cir. 2008).  A joint trial does not have to encompass joint relief. For example, a trial on liability could be limited to a few plaintiffs, after which a separate trial on damages could be held. Similarly, a trial that involved exemplary plaintiffs, followed by application of issue or claim preclusion to more plaintiffs without another trial, would be one in which the claims of 100 or more persons are being tried jointly. In short, said the court of appeals, a joint trial can take different forms as long as the plaintiffs’ claims are being determined jointly.

Here, plaintiffs may not have explicitly asked that their claims be tried jointly, but the language in their motion came close. Plaintiffs requested consolidation of their cases “through trial” and “not solely for pretrial proceedings.” They further asserted that consolidation through trial “would also facilitate the efficient disposition of a number of universal and fundamental substantive questions applicable to all or most Plaintiffs’ cases without the risk of inconsistent adjudication
in those issues between various courts…”  It is difficult to see how a trial court could consolidate the cases as requested by plaintiffs and plaintiffs’ claims would somehow not be tried jointly. Although the transferee court will decide how their cases proceed to trial, it does not matter whether a trial covering 100 or more plaintiffs actually ensues; the statutory question is whether one has been proposed.

The court thus reversed the Southern District’s grant of the plaintiff’s motion to remand and affirmed the Northern District’s ruling.