On June 11, 2018, a nearly unanimous Supreme Court dealt a deafening blow to the practice of filing successive class actions. In China Agritech v. Resh, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), the court was faced with whether a class action filing tolls the statute of limitations for putative class members who wish to file subsequent class actions. Supreme Court precedent in American Pipe & Construction v. Utah and Crown, Cork & Seal v. Parker previously established that the filing of a class action tolls the statute of limitations for individuals who later wish to bring an individual claim. But the court was silent on whether such tolling extended to class claims, and circuit courts across the country were split on the issue. Most circuits—including the Eleventh Circuit—have held that American Pipe tolling does not extend to successive class claims. However, other circuits, including the Ninth Circuit that issued the underlying decision in Resh, have held that tolling does apply to later-filed class actions.
In the 15-page opinion authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, eight of the nine justices resoundingly held that a plaintiff may not commence a follow-on class action that is outside the statute of limitations by “piggyback[ing] on an earlier, timely filed class action.” The court articulated that the efficiency and economy of litigation which supports tolling of individual claims does not support the tolling of class claims, and that “any additional class filings should be made early on, soon after the commencement of the first action seeking class certification.” The court further emphasized that “if the class mechanism is not a viable option for the claims, the decision denying certification will be at the outset of the case, litigated once for all would-be class representatives.”
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