SCOTUS Cert Grant of Interest on CAFA Jurisdiction & Removal: Standard Fire Insurance v. Knowles

Today the Supreme Court granted certiorari in The Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles (11-1450). Here’s the question presented in the petition for certiorari:

Last Term, this Court held that in a putative class action “the mere proposal of a class . . . could not bind persons who were not parties.” Smith v. Bayer Corp., 131 S. Ct. 2368, 2382 (2011). In light of that holding, the question presented is:

When a named plaintiff attempts to defeat a defendant’s right of removal under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 by filing with a class action complaint a “stipulation” that attempts to limit the damages he “seeks” for the absent putative class members to less than the $5 million threshold for federal jurisdiction, and the defendant establishes that the actual amount in controversy, absent the “stipulation,” exceeds $5 million, is the “stipulation” binding on absent class members so as to destroy federal jurisdiction?

You can find links to the lower court opinion and the cert-stage briefing at SCOTUSblog's casefile.

--A