In re: AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company
- Jesse Furman
- 1:16-cv-00740
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In re: AXA Equitable COI Litigation: Judge Furman ordered briefing on claim-splitting concerns affecting proposed class certification.
The plaintiffs, the defendants, and proposed absent class members in the requested nationwide, California, and New York classes were affected because the court required further briefing before deciding class certification.
What happened
In re: AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company COI Litigation concerns plaintiffs’ request to represent nationwide and state-specific classes in claims involving insurance policies and alleged misrepresentations.
The proposed classes covered some claims for California and New York residents but did not assert similar claims for people elsewhere. The court said this could create a risk that absent class members would later be barred from bringing those omitted claims.
Judge Jesse M. Furman did not decide whether to certify the classes. He ordered the parties to file memoranda by July 27, 2020, addressing claim-splitting and how it should affect the class-certification request.
The detailed version
- In re: AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company · No. 1:16-cv-00740
- Jesse Furman
- July 13, 2020
Background
Plaintiffs moved to certify classes for claims based on alleged breaches of insurance policies and alleged misrepresentations connected with those policies. They sought a nationwide class and several subclasses. One proposed subclass was nationwide, while other subclasses tied to claims under New York or California law were limited to residents of those states.
Issue identified by the court
The court explained that a judgment in a properly conducted class action generally binds absent class members in later litigation. It therefore expressed concern that class members outside California and New York might be affected by a judgment even though the proposed classes did not assert analogous claims for them. The court described this as a potential claim-splitting problem: pursuing some claims on a class-wide basis while leaving other claims unasserted could risk preventing absent class members from later pursuing those omitted claims.
The parties’ existing briefs had not addressed that issue. The court therefore asked them to address whether the proposed classes should be reorganized into classes based on claims arising from the policies and classes based on alleged misrepresentations, with appropriate geographic or other subclasses. It also requested briefing on how claim-splitting should affect nationwide class certification, whether some claims could be certified while others could not, whether the court could limit the effect of any judgment to claims and issues actually litigated, and whether claim-specific classes under Rule 23(c)(4) would reduce the concerns.
Ruling and effect
Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered the parties to file memoranda of law, no longer than twenty pages, by July 27, 2020. The order stated that the court would not look favorably on extension requests because resolution of the class-certification motion had already been delayed. The opinion did not grant or deny the motion for class certification and did not decide the underlying insurance claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.