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The Supreme Court today granted certiorari in a case, Mississippi v. AU Optronics Corp., No. 12-1036, to decide the following question:

Whether a state’s parens patriae action is removable as a “mass action” under the Class Action Fairness Act when the state is the sole plaintiff, the claims arise under state law, and the state attorney general possesses statutory and common-law authority to assert all claims in the complaint.

If the Court answers this question “yes,” then the great bulk of state AG actions against pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers (and other defendants as well) become potentially removable to federal courts, thus reducing the likelihood of awful results like the Caldwell case from Louisiana (see our post here).

Of course, the Court could (and may well) either answer “no” or “sometimes” to the question.  But for now the possibility is there for a major jurisdictional ruling that would be helpful to our side.

Thought you’d like to know.

More information on the case (and documents) is available here on SCOTUSBlog.