The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held Tuesday that plaintiff attorneys’ mishandling of their witness list ahead of trial in a labor suit warranted class decertification on the grounds of inadequate representation.

The ruling, from a three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based appeals court, upheld a trial court’s finding that the decision by class counsel from the Queens firm Troy Law to call just two class members to testify as witnesses, after pretrial papers indicated there could be dozens, was a “significant intervening event” that triggered decertification in the case.