Highlights from this issue include:

• Standing. The Fifth Circuit declined the opportunity to determine whether it would follow the “class certification” or the “standing” approach to standing. Under the “class certification approach,” courts determine whether the class representative has standing to pursue her own claims and views the standing of putative class members as an issue to be considered under the Rule 23 class certification standards. This approach is followed in the Sixth, First and Third Circuits and most district courts. Under the “standing approach,” courts hold that class representatives lack standing to pursue claims of class members that did not suffer the same injury. This approach is followed to different degrees in the Ninth (*sort of), Second and Eleventh Circuits. (*The Ninth Circuit only requires a broad similarity of injury between the named plaintiffs and passive class members, while the Second and Eleventh Circuits require the named plaintiff have suffered some actual injury that such conduct implicates the same set of concerns alleged to have caused injury to the putative class members.)

• Settlements. Under the Class Action Fairness Act, certain procedural rules are implicated if a class action settlement provides “coupons” for class members. The Eleventh Circuit defined coupon as a voucher, certificate or form that can be exchanged for one or more goods or services or for a discount on one or more good services. When relief provided to the class is a coupon, the attorney’s fees may be based on the value of the coupons that are redeemed, the lodestar method, or a combination of both—i.e., it cannot be based on the amount of unclaimed, available coupons.

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