A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly an American phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
The False Claims Act (FCA) is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies who defraud governmental programs. It is the federal government's primary litigation tool in combating fraud against the government. The law includes a qui tam provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government, called "relators" under the law, to file actions on behalf of the government. This is informally called "whistleblowing", especially when the relator is employed by the organization accused in the suit. Persons filing actions under the Act stand to receive a portion of any recovered damages.
In law, standing or locus standi is a condition that a party seeking a legal remedy must show they have, by demonstrating to the court, sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. A party has standing in the following situations:
Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944), was a United States Supreme Court ex parte decision handed down on December 18, 1944, in which the Justices unanimously ruled that the U.S. government could not continue to detain a citizen who was "concededly loyal" to the United States. Although the Court did not touch on the constitutionality of the exclusion of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, which it had found not to violate citizen rights in its Korematsu v. United States decision on the same date, the Endo ruling nonetheless led to the reopening of the West Coast to Japanese Americans after their incarceration in camps across the U.S. interior during World War II.
Restitution and unjust enrichment is the field of law relating to gains-based recovery. In contrast with damages, restitution is a claim or remedy requiring a defendant to give up benefits wrongfully obtained. Liability for restitution is primarily governed by the "principle of unjust enrichment": A person who has been unjustly enriched at the expense of another is required to make restitution.
The Nonintercourse Act is the collective name given to six statutes passed by the United States Congress in 1790, 1793, 1796, 1799, 1802, and 1834 to set Amerindian boundaries of reservations. The various acts were also intended to regulate commerce between settlers and the natives. The most notable provisions of the act regulate the inalienability of aboriginal title in the United States, a continuing source of litigation for almost 200 years. The prohibition on purchases of Indian lands without the approval of the federal government has its origins in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Confederation Congress Proclamation of 1783.
In the law of the United States, diversity jurisdiction is a form of subject-matter jurisdiction that gives United States federal courts the power to hear lawsuits that do not involve a federal question. For a federal court to have diversity jurisdiction over a lawsuit, two conditions must be met. First, there must be "diversity of citizenship" between the parties, meaning the plaintiffs must be citizens of different U.S. states than the defendants. Second, the lawsuit's "amount in controversy" must be more than $75,000. If a lawsuit does not meet these two conditions, federal courts will normally lack the jurisdiction to hear it unless it involves a federal question, and the lawsuit would need to be heard in state court instead.
The Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted the Case or Controversy Clause of Article III of the United States Constitution as embodying two distinct limitations on exercise of judicial review: a bar on the issuance of advisory opinions, and a requirement that parties must have standing.
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), was a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision, handed down on June 12, 1992, that heightened standing requirements under Article III of the United States Constitution. It is "one of the most influential cases in modern environmental standing jurisprudence." Lily Henning of the Legal Times stated that:
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down sixteen per curiam opinions during its 2005 term, which lasted from October 3, 2005, until October 1, 2006.
Kerri Rigsby and Cori Rigsby (Moran) are the American sisters who worked for eight years at E.A. Renfroe Company and were managers overseeing catastrophe claims adjusters. Kerri and Cori Rigsby are also the whistleblowers who proved to a Mississippi jury that State Farm committed fraud against the U.S. government. The sisters claim State Farm ignored or minimized wind damage to avoid payments relating to Hurricane Katrina and instead attributed damage to flooding so that the National Flood Insurance Program would cover the claims. The jury verdict was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was then affirmed 8-0 by the United States Supreme Court. The Rigsbys were managers who worked in Gulfport, Mississippi for a subcontractor hired by State Farm to adjust wind and flood claims after Hurricane Katrina. They were the first to uncover a fraudulent scheme by State Farm to improperly categorize wind damage as flood damage. This mischaracterization was very important because State Farm had to pay for wind damage out of its own pocket under State Farm homeowner policies, while flood damage was paid by the federal government under FEMA's flood policies. Over the course of several months, the sisters amassed thousands of pages of documents related to State Farm's activities. The Rigsbys' landmark win was historic because they were the first to prove that an insurance company defrauded the government in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program despite testimony by FEMA’s Executive Director that, after investigating the allegations, he personally didn’t believe that there was any fraud by State Farm, and he confirmed that FEMA had not asked State Farm to repay any money to the National Flood Insurance Program. However, according to court documents, the sisters took the documents without authorization. Their actions in regard to these documents is the subject of ongoing legal action. Eventually, their story went public when ABC's 20/20 show aired it in August 2006. In 2008, Judge Senter of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi found that the sisters and their attorneys had acted unethically when the Scruggs Katrina Group paid the sisters $150,000 per year each to testify, and barred them from testifying or using any of the documents that were taken. Scruggs was later forced to withdraw as their attorney because he improperly paid them for downloading and giving him the State Farm claims files and other documents to use in his lawsuits against State Farm. Scruggs also was later disbarred after pleading guilty to conspiracy to bribe a state circuit court judge in 2008 and separately, to improperly influence another state court circuit judge. He was sentenced to serve five years and seven years, to run concurrently, on the two guilty pleas.
Allison Engine Co. v. United States ex rel. Sanders, 553 U.S. 662 (2008), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that plaintiffs under the False Claims Act must prove that the false claim was made with the specific intent of inducing the government to pay or approve payment of a false or fraudulent claim, rather than merely defrauding a contractor. Congress overruled this decision with the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009.
Andrew David Hurwitz is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He served as a justice of the Arizona Supreme Court from 2003 to 2012.
American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, 564 U.S. 410 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–0 decision, held that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under federal common law, primarily because the Clean Air Act (CAA) delegates the management of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Brought to court in July 2004 in the Southern District of New York, this was the first global warming case based on a public nuisance claim.
Fellows v. Blacksmith, 60 U.S. 366 (1857), is a United States Supreme Court decision involving Native American law. John Blacksmith, a Tonawanda Seneca, sued agents of the Ogden Land Company for common law claims of trespass, assault, and battery after he was forcibly evicted from his sawmill by the Company's agents. The Court affirmed a judgement in Blacksmith's favor, notwithstanding the fact that the Seneca had executed an Indian removal treaty and the Company held the exclusive right to purchase to the land by virtue of an interstate compact ratified by Congress.
The Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1836–1864), issued several important decisions on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, building on the opinions of aboriginal title in the Marshall Court.
Pfizer Inc. v. Government of India, 434 U.S. 308 (1978), decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that foreign states are entitled to sue for treble damages in U.S. courts, and should be recognized as "persons" under the Clayton Act.
Medtronic, Inc. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC, 571 U.S. 191 (2014), is a case of the Supreme Court of the United States that deals with civil procedure, and specifically with the question of the burden of proof required in pursuing declaratory judgments.
King v. Burwell, 576 U.S. 473 (2015), was a 6–3 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States interpreting provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Court's decision upheld, as consistent with the statute, the outlay of premium tax credits to qualifying persons in all states, both those with exchanges established directly by a state, and those otherwise established by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The TFT-LCD Antitrust Litigation was a United States class-action lawsuit regarding the worldwide conspiracy to coordinate the prices of Thin-Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) panels, which are used to make laptop computers, computer monitors and televisions, between 1999 and 2006. In March 2010, Judge Susan Illston certified two nationwide classes of persons and entities that directly and indirectly purchased TFT-LCDs – for panel purchasers and purchasers of TFT-LCD integrated products; the litigation was followed by multiple suits.
