Class action lawsuits are on the rise, both in terms of litigation spending and the number of cases. Meanwhile, courts have continued to perform their gate-keeping function at the certification stage. Questions of whether common issues are truly predominant have remained at the forefront, with a continued focus on the issue of standing. This chapter discusses these issues of class certifications in the antitrust context by tracing the standards of certification and discussing the evolution of the ‘rigorous analysis’ required by federal courts. It then spotlights notable decisions from the past few years that have grappled with challenges to the sufficiency of plaintiffs’ statistical models used to demonstrate the preponderance of classwide questions, principally on the issue of showing classwide harm, and with the number of putative class members required to be sufficiently numerous for certification.

To continue reading William Cavanaugh, David Kleban, and Voratida Sangchat’s chapter on “Trends in Class Certification” in GCR’s US Courts Annual Review – Edition 4, please click here.