It's been awhile since we've written anything on Campbell v. PricewaterhouseCoopers but this announcement from the plaintiffs' attorneys seemed worthy of sharing with you all:
On March 1, 2013, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals entered an order denying defendant PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP's petition for an early appeal of the District Court's order denying class decertification.This means that we will be heading to trial on behalf of the certified class of California Attest Associates. In fact, the District Court Judge, Honorable Lawrence K. Karlton, has now set a Scheduling Conference for April 8, 2013, at which time we anticipate the Court will establish the final pre-trial schedule and (hopefully) set a trial date. We will update the website with the trial schedule following the April 8th hearing.
The initial motion to decertify the class action occurred on November 29, 2012, which was denied by Judge Karlton. Less than a week later, on December 5th, the Court set a Scheduling Conference for February 4, 2013 but then on December 7th, PwC appealed Judge Karlton's ruling. Based on the statement from Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff above, obviously the Scheduling Conference did not happen. Why?
Well, it's kinda funny. On January 24th, Senior District Judge William Shubb initially denied PwC's request to delay the conference. Besides the firm's decision to appeal the denial to decertify the class action, lead counsel for the firm Daniel Thomasch was not available on February 4th. Judge Shubb was NOT impressed with either of these excuses and wrote the following in a couple of footnotes:
[1] Defendant advises the court that the appellate filing was made pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f). The court assumes, without deciding, that defendant was not required to notify this court of its request for leave to appeal, however sensible it would have been to do so. Given that the appellate filing is the basis for the relief defendant seeks, it would have been the better practice for defendant to let this court know about the filing around the time it was made.[2] It would have been the better practice, in any event, to let the court know about [Thomasch's] conflict around the time the court's order issued scheduling the conference.
A few days later, Judge Karlton let it go and vacated the February 4th conference, allowing the postponement. What does all this mean?
It means that PwC doesn't seem too eager to go to court. And why not? They can afford to drag this out as long as they possibly can. We'll see what happens after the conference on April 8th and update just as soon as we know the details.
In the meantime, here's more of our coverage of Campbell v. PricewaterhouseCoopers and a discussion of whether or not you should join a class action.
