Class Action Grounded: Court Finds Insufficient Factual Basis For Airline Capacity Constraint Suit

Key Takeaways

• The law requires more than generic allegations to certify a class: the plaintiff's boilerplate allegations in the statement of claim lacked sufficient specificity, which was fatal to the plaintiff's claim.
• Ontario courts will root out frivolous claims by requiring a plaintiff to show both some basis in fact for the existence of the alleged conspiracy and that the issues in dispute can be resolved for each class member on a common basis.
• Plaintiffs cannot merely point to similar U.S. proceedings as some basis in fact for the existence of a conspiracy in Canada. Although the evidentiary threshold is low, class members must show evidence that their claims have some basis in fact.