In Bullard et al vs. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. et al., Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook noted that under CAFA, a mass action can be sent to federal court if the plaintiffs propose a trial involving the claims of at least 100 litigants, if at least one plaintiff seeks at least $75,000, if the stakes as a whole are more than $5 million and if the parties involved are from different states.
The plaintiffs in the case are 144 people seeking damages from Burlington Northern and three other defendants that allegedly allowed dangerous chemicals to escape from a wood-processing plant. The plaintiffs sought to have the case tried in Cook County, Ill., circuit court. The defendants, citing CAFA, sought to have the case heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The plaintiffs said that the case should be moved back to state court because their suit was not a mass action.
According to Judge Easterbrook, the plaintiffs “insist that a complaint never proposes a trial,” adding that the plaintiffs assert that the defendants may remove a ‘mass action’ only on the eve of a trial, once a final pretrial order or equivalent document identifies the number of parties to a trial.”
The district court denied the plaintiffs’ motion, and the appeals court affirmed that ruling, with Judge Easterbrook noting the appeals court took the case because the legal issue had never been addressed in any federal circuit court. He wrote that the lower court’s “conclusion is the only sensible reading” of the statute.
The plaintiffs argued that “no mass action could ever be a class action, for a suit cannot be identified as a ‘mass action’ until close to trial, while a suit is a class action or not,” under the relevant section of CAFA, “on the date of filing,” wrote Judge Easterbrook. “Courts do not read statutes to make entire subsections vanish into the night.”