On November 18, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld the right of out-of-state defendants to remove lawsuits from state court to federal court when the suit involves numerous plaintiffs. The decision was a victory for WLF, which filed a brief arguing that the trial court’s decision remanding a massive product liability suit back to state court was inconsistent with the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), a 2005 federal law designed to permit removal of virtually all large class action lawsuits into federal court. The appeals court held that the case (filed against numerous drug manufacturers) qualified as a “mass action” and thus was subject to CAFA. Plaintiffs’ counsel sought to divide their case into separate lawsuits, each with less than 100 plaintiffs (the statutory minimum for a “mass action”). The appeals court held that CAFA removal was warranted after plaintiffs asked the state courts to coordinate their lawsuits “for all purposes.”