Corporate and trial lawyers, corporate executives and government officials responsible for managing class action litigation are enjoined to attend a seminar featuring a series of lectures relative to ‘Innovative Strategies for Litigating Class Action Suits’ on May 11 & 12, 2006 at the Renaissance Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Washington.
According the program organizers, this seminar brings together a national panel of leaders from the courts and both sides of the class action bar to explain the most recent and important developments in state and federal laws affecting class actions and class arbitrations. Legal experts will share innovative strategies to successfully litigate and meet the business and legal challenges of class actions.
Invitation to the seminar comes with this challenge:
Class actions dominate the litigation landscape. They create massive liability exposure for defendants, attract the attention of regulators and law enforcement officials, inspire bad press, undermine corporate public relations, and draw whistleblowers out of the wood work. Whether in consumer, finance, securities, antitrust, employment or other areas, class actions multiply and magnify the risks of mis-steps in litigation.
Enactment of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and Prop 64 in California are posing major challenges for class action plaintiffs and creating new defenses to be deployed by defendants. Yet, even these truly significant recent developments may be overshadowed by another trend, the sudden discovery and emergence of "class arbitration."
During the two-day event, there will be a review of the basics, to include: What Makes a Viable Class Action? What a plaintiffs' class action attorney should look for in a case before filing a complaint; Pre-suit investigation and analysis into the alleged unlawful acts, the class representative, the liability and damage issues, experts, whistleblowers, confidential informants and the risk-benefit ratio; and, Impact of expansion of class action in federal courts on courts and litigants.
On recent developments, lectures will focus on: Analysis of California's Proposition 64; A Judicial Review of Class Action Litigation tackling the most problematic class action issues for plantiffs and defendants; and, Evolving class actions strategies under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. With the latter, both plantiff and defendant perspectives on what has and hasn't been working under the act will be presented.