Conscientious Objectors?

This week our guest Ryan Wu unpacks Hernandez v. Restoration Hardware, a class action appeal argued before the California Supreme Court this week. The case specifically asks whether unnamed class members who did not intervene during a class action may nonetheless appeal when a lower court dismisses objections they file against class action dispositions, be them judgments or settlements. Wu is a senior counsel with Capstone Law APC, who often handles his firm's class action settlements, and says that the court has an opportunity in this case to protect class action litigation against what he says is the fairly common occurrence of bad faith objectors trying to gum up class claim resolutions with protracted appeals, perhaps seeking to extort class plaintiffs. In the Fourth District's appellate ruling, the appeals court, Wu says, surprised many class action attorneys by dismissing a prominent line of case law in its ruling in order to dust off and reassert a 75-year old California high court ruling that seems to disfavor the objector's position in this case.
We'll also hear from our reporters Chase DiFeliciantonio and Nick Sonnenburg about prominent immigration and establishment clauses cases in the 9th Circuit.