On July 6, 2004, the North Carolina Court of Appeals imposed strict limits on certification of nationwide class action lawsuits, in which the plaintiff seeks to sue on behalf of himself and every similarly situated person throughout the nation. The decision was a victory for WLF, which filed a brief urging that nationwide certification be overturned in this case. WLF argued that lawyers often bring nationwide class actions as a means of coercing a settlement, without regard to the merits of the suits. Such suits tend to be totally unmanageable, because class members will often have widely varying damages claims, and different laws apply to class members from different states. The trial judge in this case tried to avoid these problems by decreeing that all claims would be judged under North Carolina law. The court of appeals agreed with WLF that applying North Carolina law violated the due process rights of the vast majority of litigants who had no connection with North Carolina.