Sixth Circuit Narrowly Construes CAFA's Local Controversy Exception

Congress passed the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) in 2005 to address a series of well-documented abuses of the class action process. Among the protections of the act were provisions enabling class action defendants to remove class action cases more readily than had been allowed before. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d). The new CAFA removal provisions very generally permitted removal of class actions filed in state court when the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million, there are at least 100 class members and any class member is a citizen of a different state from any defendant. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2), (10). Desiring to keep such claims in state court, plaintiffs have devised ways to thwart removal by, for example, artificially deflating the amount in controversy or deliberately withholding demands for higher amounts until the time for removal has arguably passed. We've blogged some of these efforts here. While many of these cases have been decided in contexts outside