NACA Class Action Guidelines Published in Federal Rules Decisions

by Brian Wolfman

In 1997, the National Association of Consumer Advocates published its ground breaking "Standards and Guidelines for Litigating and Settling Class Actions." These guidelines, published at 176 F.R.D. 375 (1997), sought to support the proper use of class actions while curbing their abuse.The first edition was widely cited by litigants and courts.

In 2006, NACA issued a second edition to the guidelines, which revised and improved the prior version and addied eight entirely new guidelines. At the time, class action expert Charles Delbaum wrote an excellent CLP post about the new guidelines.

Now, Federal Rules Decisions has published the second edition at 255 F.R.D. 215 (2009) (with a very brief foreword by me). Advocates and judges will now be able to easily find and cite the second edition as they were with the first.