Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 281
with limited prejudice to the addition as a defendant. The Sixth Circuit noted that a writ
of mandamus was an extraordinary remedy not appropriate here, as there was no clear
abuse of discretion by the district court. For these reasons, the Sixth Circuit denied the
request for a writ of mandamus.
Q.
Severance Of Class Claims
Defendants facing multi-plaintiff lawsuits often opt to attack the litigation by seeking
severance of the multiple claims into multiple individual lawsuits.
In Vance, et al. v. Safety-Kleen Systems, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183125 (N.D. Tex. Oct.
6, 2022), the court analyzed whether a case should proceed as a class claim or if the
claims should be severed into multiple individual claims. It determined that when
multiple experts were needed to prove the class members’ injuries, a class action is not
an appropriate legal method for recovery. In Vance, the plaintiffs, a group of former
employees, filed a class action alleging that they were exposed to chemical solvents at
the defendant’s facility that caused cancer. The defendant filed a motion to sever the
claims of the 20 plaintiffs, and the court granted the motion. The plaintiffs contended
that the lawsuit should be allowed to stand because they all were injured by a “common
defect” that caused “cancerous ailments.” Id. at *7. The defendant argued that the
plaintiffs’ claims arose from separate transactions and occurrences and lack a common
question of law or fact. The court determined that the plaintiffs’ claims involved
exposure to one or more of 15 different products, to varying degrees, in different job
positions, and during different periods of employment, and their exposure allegedly led
to different forms of cancer. The court opined that severing the claims would be the
most efficient option for adjudication due to the different types of medical experts needs
to testify as to different types of cancer. The court further reasoned that the plaintiffs’
claims lacked the necessary aggregate of operative facts to constitute a series of
transactions or occurrences. For these reasons, the court granted defendant’s motion to
sever plaintiffs’ claims.
280
© Duane Morris LLP 2023
Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
