New and Improved NACA Class Action Guidelines

by Charles Delbaum

Class action practitioners should become familiar with September, 2006 revisions to the National Association of Consumer Advocates’ Guidelines for Litigating and Settling Consumer Class Actions, originally adopted in 1997. The initial Guidelines were published at 176 F.R.D. 370. The new Guidelines, available at www.naca.net, are 70 single spaced pages. The Guidelines set out best practices governing difficult ethical and practical issues, are replete with fresh insights into important legal issues, and have proved to be persuasive authority to courts.

Eight topics are added, including how to settle a predatory lending class action while protecting homeowners’ rights to resist foreclosure, how to keep class representatives from being “picked off” by offers of individual relief, and preventing defendants from improper ex parte communications with customers who are class members. The revised Guidelines also clarify several existing guidelines, and delete two guidelines because intervening Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 amendments afford adequate direction. See, e.g.,In re Educational Testing Service Praxis, 2006 WL 2513005 (E.D. La. 2006). For reasons of space, this article only briefly reviews certain highlights of the revised Guidelines: