When we convince a court that an action against one of our clients must be dismissed for failure to state a claim – say, for TwIqbal reasons – under Rule 12, we sometimes say that the plaintiff’s case was so poor that s/he couldn’t even get to first base. A much rarer form of dismissal,
“For lo the Winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” Song of Solomon, 2:11. Except it’s not gone. The torrents of Spring have arrived in the Delaware Valley. Yesterday was dank and stormy, and it shows no signs of letting up. “There is a sound of abundance of rain.” Kings, 18:41. We do
Yesterday, we reported on the federalism aspects of Rhodes v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 636 F.3d 88 (4th Cir. 2011). We mentioned in that post that another interesting aspect to Rhodes involved the dismissal of the medical monitoring claims. Here’s what that’s about.
What happened is this:
First, the trial court
We’ve posted about one of the big certiorari grants from yesterday – Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes – so today, we’re taking a look at the other one – American Elec. Power Co. v. Connecticut, aka the “global warming” case. Here’s the link to the SCOTUSblog collection of case resources. Just as with Dukes,
We don’t subscribe to the theory of collective conscience, though when Julie Delpy talks about it in Waking Life it’s hard to disagree. Still, there are times when you find yourself repeatedly stumbling against the same idea in ways that seem beyond coincidence. Last week we praised a federal judge in New Jersey who sent
We’ve reported before on the good decisions from the federal district court in New Jersey rejecting putative class actions based on off-label marketing, including a decision earlier this year and the Intron/Temodar decision last year. The first Intron/Temodar decision gave the third-party payer plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint. They did, and the court has
The standing requirement. . . . Are you asleep yet?
Okay, few things induce yawning and cure insomnia as much as discussions about standing and jurisdiction, but in the world of no-injury lawsuits, we defense lawyers have to pay attention to such things. Standing (for the non-lawyers) is a requirement that courts impose on parties who want to sue. To have standing (at least in federal court), you need to have: (1) suffered an injury – which can be economic or not, but for our discussion today, let’s stick with an economic injury; (2) causally connected to the conduct complained of; and (3) redressable by the court.
As a practical matter, standing (generally — there are almost always exceptions to rules) means that you can’t sue a car dealer for selling a car for a false representation unless you actually bought the car. If you bought the car, you have an injury: money paid, causally connected to the false statement you complain of, and your claim is “redressable” – that is, a court can help you by ruling that you get your money refunded. But if you only thought of buying the car, or if you watched while someone else bought the car, even if you are angered by the car salesman, you have no standing to sue. (For purposes of this discussion, we’re ignoring the exception – we told you there were exceptions – that at times the law grants people standing to sue on behalf of the public.)
In federal courts, standing requirements come from the case or controversy requirement of the judicial power under Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution (“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, . . .–to Controversies”). Therefore, if you don’t have a real “case” or “controversy,” the courts have no authority (“jurisdiction”) to hear your gripe. States have their own versions of this constitutional grant of judicial authority; some are like the federal version, some aren’t (more exceptions) – so we’ll stick with the feds.
Now, just because you have standing does not mean you win your case, or get awarded damages. But it does get you past the first hurdle – the courthouse door – and thus into the game. And sometimes, especially class actions where the plaintiff’s goal is to pressure a defendant into settlement through the sheer size of the claim, getting into the game is the game.Continue Reading You say no injury, I say no standing