Amicus Brief of Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, and Federal Courts Professors in Rosinski v. Shulkin

Abstract

In April 2017, the Federal Circuit held that veterans could bring class actions in the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, reversing over 30 years of precedent. The Federal Circuit concluded the court had power to hear class actions to improve efficiency, consistency and fairness in its own proceedings.

As a result, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims has begun considering whether it should adopt formal rules to aggregate cases. At the same time, veterans groups have already started filing class actions. Accordingly, the Court invited amici to address whether and how it should hear class actions before it adopts a formal rule to do so.

This brief surveys a range of different courts - federal courts, legislative courts and administrative tribunals - to show how they have experimented with class actions. We show how many different courts gained invaluable experience, and swiftly resolved large numbers of pending cases, by incrementally using aggregate procedures before adopting a formal rule. We also show how courts, like the nation's veteran's courts, can tailor their aggregate procedures to handle the specific claims that come before them to promote access to fair representation and efficient outcomes.