Overcome Ascertainability Hurdle by Crafting Very Tight Class Definition, Judge Says

Class action attorneys should strive to propose carefully worded class definitions to avoid running into ascertainability issues at the certification stage, a federal judge from the Northern District of Illinois advised practitioners recently.

The definition a class starts with will drive a lot of the discussion, Judge John Z. Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said.

“If you give the judge a very tightly crafted class, where you have a pretty good sense both of the time perimeters and objective criteria, there will be less concern about things like ascertainability and what identifies members ...