U.S. Supreme Court hands down CAFA opinion: The Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Knowles

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its opinion in a CAFA case, The Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Knowles, ___ S.Ct. ___ (Mar. 19, 2013). 

The case was argued on January 7, 2013.  The argument transcript is available at this link.  The last paragraph of the unanimous opinion reads:

In sum, the stipulation at issue here can tie Knowles’ hands, but it does not resolve the amount-in-controversy question in light of his inability to bind the rest of the class. For this reason, we believe the District Court, when following the statute to aggregate the proposed class members’ claims, should have ignored that stipulation. Because it did not, we vacate the judgment below and remand the case or further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

As I explained in this post, the question was whether the plaintiff could defeat CAFA removal by "stipulating" that the amount in controversy did not exceed $5 million.  Based on the paragraph quoted above, it sounds like the Supreme Court's answer is no. 

I will have more on the opinion in a later post. 

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