Two insurance class actions will remain in state court after the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Life of the South Insurance Co. v. Carzell, 2017 WL 1174083 (11th Cir. Mar. 29, 2017) (Marcus, J.). The court held that federal diversity jurisdiction does not exist under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) if all defendants and plaintiff…
Author: Lee Peifer
Eleventh Circuit Begins Posting Oral Arguments to Public Website
After years of quiet reluctance, the Eleventh Circuit has finally begun posting oral-argument recordings on its website. The court thus joins the U.S. Supreme Court and the majority of U.S. Courts of Appeals that already make recordings of oral arguments publicly available online. The court’s change in policy toward oral-argument recordings is reflected in amendments to…
CAFA’s Local-Controversy Provision Can’t Trump Federal-Question Jurisdiction
The Eleventh Circuit reinstated a federal RICO case but approved the denial of a motion to remand it to state court under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) in Blevins v. Aksut, No. 16-11585, 2017 WL 782288 (11th Cir. Mar. 1, 2017). The court’s opinion confirms that CAFA’s local-controversy provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(4), does not strip…
New Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure Take Effect
Practitioners take note: Significant amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure took effect on December 1, 2016. The Eleventh Circuit’s website has a helpful summary of the major changes here, and a complete set of the amended rules, along with the latest Eleventh Circuit Rules and Internal Operating Procedures, is available here. The biggest…