Rethinking class certification approval from the bench, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a decision Tuesday indicating he had changed his mind in a false advertising case.

While writing the certification decision in the case captioned Ortiz v. Saba University School of Medicine, U.S. District Judge William G. Young of the District of Massachusetts said he "realized that decision was wrong." Young maintained that Natalia Ortiz, the plaintiff in the case, successfully established the four requirements for class certification under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a), but concluded that she did not specifically identify the states where other class members lived in order to apply Massachusetts consumer protection laws across the board.
Applying Massachusetts law across all states in the present case could impose "inconsistent liability standards across jurisdictions," Young said.