A couple of months ago, we spied the Supreme Court case of Taylor v. Sturgell as being one to watch. In the words of the Mass Tort Litigation Blog, “[t]he D.C. Circuit had held that a plaintiff was barred by claim preclusion from pursuing his FOIA claim because he was virtually represented by an earlier plaintiff who had made an identical request, litigated, and lost.” That issue is analogous to issues that often arise in class actions and mass torts — where one party implicitly or expressly represents another.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected this concept of non-party virtual representation. SCOTUS Blog gives the background of the case, and the Mass Tort Litigation Blog has a nice description of yesterday’s decision here.
We’ll rely on those two posts as our coverage of the issue.