Open Question: Federal Jurisdiction under CAFA

An article in the June 12 issue of BNA Class Action Litigation Report discusses the question of whether the denial of class certification deprives federal courts of CAFA jurisdiction.  No court of appeals has weighed in on this precise question, but the district courts are deeply split.  The authors point out that two district courts in recent opinions held that “notwithstanding the court’s denial of plaintiffs’motion for class certification, it retained subject matter jurisdictionover the matter under CAFA” because “jurisdiction isdetermined at the outset of the proceedings, and subsequentdevelopments in the case do not affect that original determination.”  Two other recent district court opinions, the authors point out, went in the opposite direction, holding that, according to the plain text of the statute, “jurisdiction could not survive the denial of class certification.”

The full text of the article can be found here.

WBR