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Class Certification Defeated in Microwave Oven Class Action
The Situation
General Electric, in a putative class action, won a major victory when the court denied the plaintiffs' motion to certify the class. The plaintiffs originally sought certification of a nationwide class comprising all owners of GE-branded microwave ovens manufactured since 2000, plus statewide classes in California, Michigan and Ohio. The proposed class originally included approximately 54 million microwave ovens and the plaintiffs' expert valued their damages at up to $11 billion.
NERA's Role
NERA Senior Vice President Lucy P. Allen was retained by GE to analyze class certification issues and rebut plaintiffs' expert's damages analysis.
The Result
The court, in an earlier order, found plaintiffs' expert's damages methods to be "unreliable" in part. The court then agreed with GE that the case could not proceed as a class action, primarily because of a lack of commonality among the scores of models at issue and excluded claims that rest upon "unreliable" damages methods.