By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Laura Maechtlen

As previewed in prior posts, we were honored by BNA’s request that Seyfarth’s class action practitioners author an analysis of the SCOTUS ruling in Dukes, et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. for BNA’s Class Action Litigation Report, its seminal publication on complex litigation. Our BNA article is hot off the press, and can be accessed here. Our article appeared in BNA’s Class Action Litigation Report alongside a piece by Professor John Coffee of Columbia University, a leading academic scholar on class action litigation. The Seyfarth and Coffee articles were the sole pieces run by BNA on Dukes for its readership.

Our article analyzes how Dukes will impact the defense of future workplace class action litigation, including how merits-based inquiries can now overlap with class certification elements; the viability of “social framework” theories for workplace bias class claims; the limits on expert presentations to advance or oppose class certification theories; how “trial by formula” theories are now inapplicable to certain types of class actions; the differences in litigating Rule 23(b)(3) certification theories and theories underlying “hybrid” class claims; what “incidental” class claims for money damages mean under Rule 23(b)(2) in the future; how Dukes “has legs” irrespective of the size of plaintiffs’ proposed class; and the broader implications of Dukes for employers and for workplace class actions.