Class action defendants scored an important victory Monday when a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court barred so-called stacked, or follow-on, cases that are filed after the expiration of a statutory time limit.
The justices, ruling in a securities case, said its 1974 decision in American Pipe & Construction v. Utah suspends the statute of limitations while a putative class action is pending, which allows unnamed class members to join individually or to file separate claims if the class fails. “But American Pipe does not permit the maintenance of a follow-on class action past expiration of the statute of limitations,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the court in China Agritech v. Resh.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
