(Footnote 76 return)
Civil filings in state trial courts of general jurisdiction have increased 28 percent since 1984 (versus an increase of only 4 percent in the federal courts). See B. Ostrom & N. Kauder, Examining the Work of State Courts, State Justice Institute, 1997, at 15 (Court Statistics Project 1998). Most tellingly, in most jurisdictions, each state court judge is assigned an average of 1,000 to 2,000 new cases each year. Id. In contrast, each federal court judge was assigned an average of 500 cases last year. See L.H. Mecham, Judicial Business of the United States Courts: 2000 Report of the Director 20, 22 (2001) (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts) The federal court trend is downward. Since 1997, there has been an eight percent decrease in the number of pending civil cases in our federal courts nationwide. Id. at 22.

(Footnote 77 return)
Senate Report at 16.

(Footnote 78 return)
Id.

(Footnote 79 return)
See 28 U.S.C. §1407.

(Footnote 80 return)
Senate Report at 19 (''Yet another common abuse [of the class action device in state courts] is the filing of 'copy cat' class actions (i.e., duplicative class actions asserting similar claims on behalf of essentially the same people).''). As noted in the Senate Report, ''sometimes these duplicative actions are filed by lawyers who hope to wrest the potentially lucrative lead role away from the original lawyers, [and] in other instances, the 'copy cat' class actions are blatant forum shopping—the original class lawyers file similar class actions before different courts in an effort to find a receptive judge who will rapidly certify a class.'' Id. When these cases are filed in state courts, there is no way to coordinate or consolidate the cases; the cases must be litigated in an ''uncoordinated, redundant fashion.'' Id. ''The result is enormous waste—multiple judges of different courts must spend considerable time adjudicating precisely the same claims asserted on behalf of precisely the same people.'' Id. at 19–20. ''As a result, State courts and class counsel may 'compete' to control the cases, often harming all the parties involved.'' Id. See also House Report at 9.

(Footnote 81 return)
Senate Report at 21.

(Footnote 82 return)
Advisory Comm. Memo at 14.

(Footnote 83 return)
See American Judicature Society (State Justice Institute), Certification of Questions of Law: Federalism in Practice 28, 34–35 (1995) (noting that over a several year period, federal appeals and trial courts had certified hundreds of state law questions to state appellate courts for resolution).

(Footnote 84 return)
See Senate Report at 16–17 (citing numerous examples).

(Footnote 85 return)
Federal Judicial Center, Empirical Study of Class Actions in Four Federal District Courts 68–69 (1996).

(Footnote 86 return)
Senate Report at 15–22.

(Footnote 87 return)
See, e.g., State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. Tashire, 386 U.S. 523, 530–31 (1967) (''in a variety of contexts, [federal courts] have concluded that Article III poses no obstacle to the legislative extension of federal jurisdiction, founded on diversity, so long as any two adverse parties are not co-citizens''). In State Farm, the Court noted that the concept of ''minimal diversity'' providing the basis for diversity jurisdiction in the class action context had already been discussed in Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur v. Cauble, 255 U.S. 356 (1921). On several subsequent occasions, the Court has reiterated its view that permitting the exercise of federal diversity jurisdiction where there is less than complete diversity among the parties is wholly consistent with Article III. See, e.g., Carden v. Arkoma Associates, 494 U.S. 185, 199–200 (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (''Complete diversity . . . is not constitutionally mandated.''); Newman-Green, Inc. v. Alfonzo-Larrian, 490 U.S. 826 (1989) (''The complete diversity requirement is based on the diversity statute, not Article III of the Constitution.''); Owen Equipment & Erection Co. v. Kroger, 437 U.S. 365 (1978) (''It is settled that complete diversity is not a constitutional requirement.''); Snyder v. Harris, 394 U.S. 332, 340 (1969) (in a class action brought under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23, only the citizenship of the named representatives of the class is considered, without regard to whether the citizenship of other members of the putative class would destroy complete diversity).

(Footnote 88 return)
Actions Without Class, supra n.1.