The U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes might not have turned out to be the class action silver bullet that some had anticipated, but that’s little consolation to class action plaintiffs lawyers who brought claims against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. , over allegedly discriminatory subprime lending.
In a victory for the bank’s counsel, Reed Smith’s Robert “Bo” Phillips, on September 6 San Francisco federal district court judge Maxine Chesney rejected the plaintiffs’ class certification motion, ruling that an enormous proposed class of nearly 1 million black and Hispanic homeowners didn’t survive the certification standard for commonality set out by the Supreme Court in Dukes.
