John H. Beisner, Jessica Davidson Miller, Mealey’s Tort Reform Update (April 2004)

This article examines the extent to which the proposed Class Action Fairness Act would shift class actions from state to federal courts. The study compiles evidence from the class actions filed over the past 5 years in the six states for which relatively complete class action filing data are available and concludes that the vast majority of the class actions filed in those states during the study period had a local focus or were relatively small in scope and therefore would remain in state court under the federal class action bill.