CAFA Law Blog editors – Anthony Rollo, Michael Ferachi, and Gabe Crowson – recently published an article in March 27, 2015 edition of Bloomberg BNA’s Class Action Litigation Report, titled Supreme Court Rejection of Presumption Against Removal of CAFA Cases in Dart Cherokee Opens Door to Presumption in Favor of CAFA Removal. A copy of the article can be found here: PDFArtic
In their article, the authors argue that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dart Cherokee Basin Operating co., LLC v. Owens, 2014 BL 350806, 135 S. Ct. 547 (Dec. 15, 2014) opens the door to a presumption in favor of CAFA removal. As explained in the article, the Dart Cherokee Court cited CAFA’s legislative history for the proposition “that no antiremoval presumption attends cases invoking CAFA, which Congress enacted to facilitate adjudication of certain class actions in federal court.” According to the legislative history cited by the Court, CAFA should be read broadly with a “strong preference” that interstate class actions should be heard in federal court. While the Dart Cherokee Court did not expressly adopt a presumption in favor of CAFA removal, the opinion certainly opens the door to defense arguments that there should be a presumption in favor of CAFA removal.