ClassActionBlawg.com

In what could be the most important Colorado case involving class action law this year, the Colorado Supreme Court has granted defendant’s petition for cert in Farmer’s Insurance Exchange v. Benzing.  Review was granted on the following issues:

1) Whether Colorado should extend the federal securities-law doctrine of “fraud-on-the-market” to relieve plaintiffs of the burden of proving causation of injury in class actions alleging non-securities claims such as insurance bad faith and violation of the Colorado Consumer Protection Act.

2) Whether a trial court is precluded from decertifying a class based on a ground that defendants did not assert at the initial certification hearing, where the evidence supporting that ground was not discovered until after the hearing.   

3) Whether the court of appeals improperly reweighed the evidence and substituted its assessment for the trial court’s in reviewing the trial court’s decision to decertify a class.

Here is a link to the case announcement:http://www.courts.state.co.us/supct/caseannouncements/2008/02.19.08.htm