The Benefits and Burdens of Mega-Litigation

Petersen v. Bank of America, No. G048387 (D4d3 Dec. 11, 2014)

In a colorful majority opinion in 2-1 split decision reversing the trial court, the court of appeal holds that 818 individual plaintiffs can permissively join their mortgage-related claims under § 378 of the Code of Civil Procedure.  Taking some good-natured jabs at the “rococo” allegations of the voluminous Third Amended Complaint—in which “[r]hetorical flourishes abound”—Justice Bedsworth’s twenty-page majority opinion references William Jennings Bryan, Aristotle, Cicero, and Herman Melville. It’s a little over the top, perhaps on purpose. But it does read like the Justice had a good time writing it and the analysis doesn’t suffer for the style. Indeed, the opinion devotes the bulk of its discussion to analysis and forgoes the needless but all too typical recitation of the parties’ arguments and other procedural minutiae from the case below. That all said, this one seems like a pretty close call, or at least it seems so to me.