Calif. Court Has Lighter Caseload Than N.J., Say Samsung Plaintiffs

Plaintiffs Naeem Seirafi and Shelby Holtzclaw support the motion before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to transfer all the Samsung data breach class actions to U.S. District Court for Northern California and consolidate them under a single judge, Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco, said their response Tuesday (case 3005). The JPML docket shows 13 related class actions pending in six federal districts, it said. The lawsuits “are nearly identical, as all actions assert common factual allegations and involve overlapping claims and legal issues,” it said. Consolidating the cases in a single district “will promote judicial efficiency, and will avoid the risk of inconsistent and overlapping judgments,” it said. It rejects the arguments of several U.S. District of New Jersey plaintiffs to move all the cases to Newark instead of San Francisco (see 2210270003) because the Northern District of California has “significantly fewer pending civil cases” than Newark (11,248 vs. 63,299), it said. Transferring the cases to San Francisco “would not be a burden on the judicial system there,” it said.