Mirroring or Muscling: An Examination of State Class Action Appellate Rulemaking

This Symposium focuses on the developments in aggregate litigation since Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor 1 and Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corporation, 2 the Supreme Court's prominent pair of mass tort class action cases decided in the last few years of the twentieth century.In the year between those high profile decisions interpreting Federal Rule 23, with far less fanfare or drama, the Court approved its first significant amendment to the federal class action rule in over thirty years, Rule 23(f).This article examines the impact of that long-awaited, yet modest, federal rule change on its state class action rule counterparts, part of a larger research project examining federal/state procedural dynamics and broader issues of tort reform.Rule 23(f) grew out of the concern that lower court misinterpretations of Rule 23 too often escaped appellate review and correction due to the interlocutory nature of the class certification order.