Courts are still going both ways on applying Bristol-Myers Squibb to class actions. Two recent decisions highlight this split.
The first—and we’ll always start with the good news—comes out of the District of Massachusetts in Roy v. FedEx Ground Package System, Inc. There, the court held that Bristol-Myers Squibb applies to collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and limited opt-in notices to drivers who worked in the forum state. In doing so, the court rejected the idea that FLSA actions are materially different from the mass tort action in Bristol-Myers Squibb. Although the court hedged a bit on whether Bristol-Myer would apply in every context, it quoted Chavez v. Church & Dwight Co. for the proposition that “[n]othing in Bristol-Myers suggests that its basic holding is inapplicable to class actions.”
Apart from its narrow (but important) application in the FLSA context, Roy aligns with the view that Bristol-Myers Squibb does not announce a limited rule, but rather defines what due process means in the context of personal jurisdiction. It joins these other 2018 decisions:
- Practice Management Support Services, Inc. v. Cirque du Soleil, Inc., 301 F. Supp. 3d 840 (N.D. Ill. 2018) (“It not clear how Practice Management can distinguish the Supreme Court’s basic holding in Bristol–Myers simply because this is a class action.”)
- Mussat v. IQVIA, Inc., 2018 WL 5311903 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 26, 2018) (“Whether it be an individual, mass, or class action, the defendant’s rights should remain constant.”)
But not all courts are in agreement. In Jones v. Depuy Synthes Products, Inc., one judge in the Northern District of Alabama declined to apply Bristol-Myers Squibb to a class action at the motion-to-strike stage. While the court in Jones disagreed with many of the arguments class-action plaintiffs have used to avoid Bristol-Myers Squibb (such as the assertion that Bristol-Myers Squibb does not apply to federal courts sitting in...
