FCA Loses Bid for Test Hearings on Issues in Warranty Class Suit

Bellwether proceedings, typically used to test claims in litigation consolidating many individual suits, aren’t appropriate to resolve issues in a proposed class action, a federal court in Michigan said when rejecting a request by FCA US LLC in a case over auto warranty conditions.

Fiat Chrysler “moved for bellwether appointments to occur only through the summary judgment stage of the litigation” but didn’t cite any precedent for that, Judge Stephen J. Murphy III said Monday for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

“Without any experience with the proposed procedure, and no federal common law on which ...