On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court relisted Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. Jackson, no. 10-735, for conference tomorrow (June 23), which means an up or down vote on cert. may be announced as early as Monday.
Yesterday (June 21), both sides filed supplemental briefs addressing Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, ___ U.S. ___ (Jun. 20, 2011). The tobacco companies' supplemental brief is here. The plaintiffs' supplemental brief is here. [Links via SCOTUSblog.]
SCOTUSblog has a more detailed post on these developments. See this blog post for more on the issues raised in the case. This is a Louisiana state court case, so the cert. petition could test the extent to which the Justices believe that any of the principles (or, more likely, the leanings) announced in Wal-Mart may impact state-court class-action proceedings. Nothing in Wal-Mart appears to me particularly relevant to state-court litigation, but certain Justices may have a different view.
(As a programming note, I remain swamped in my day job, so my posting has been sparse. While it's great to be busy with lots of cases, I hope my workload will return to normal eventually.)
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