Hilton Hotels Retirement Plan, et al. v. Valerie White, et al.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f ) sets a “purposefully unforgiving” fourteen-day deadline to file a petition for permission to appeal from an order “granting or denying class-action certification.” Nutraceutical Corp. v. Lambert, 139 S. Ct. 710, 715-16 (2019). Although Nutraceutical held that there could be no equitable tolling applied to this rule, it left open the question as to when, if ever, the Rule 23(f ) fourteen-day time period could, following an initial ruling on class certification, be restarted by a subsequent class certification motion. The question presented is: Do successive motions for class certification restart the fourteen-day period under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f ) for seeking permission to appeal an order granting or denying class certification?

Federal courts use the term “fail-safe” to describe a class whose individual membership only includes those found to have a valid claim against the defendants on the merits. The question presented is: Does Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 permit certification of a “fail-safe” class?