Tim Pinos

Committee Chair Corner – Class Actions and Multi-Party Litigation Committee
Tim Pinos
Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP
tpinos@casselsbrock.com

The Class Actions and Multi-Party Litigation Committee wants YOU!

I am delighted and honoured (note the Canadian spelling gives me away) to assume the Chair of this Committee for the next couple of years. This Committee is one of the larger Committees in the IADC, with more than 360 members, and as a group whose common interest is procedural, we have members in common with virtually every other IADC Substantive Committee. 

This poses challenges in terms of making the work of the Committee relevant to as many members as possible, but, to coin a phrase, “We have a plan!”

The first part of that is our monthly calls. Each monthly call will include one or two short presentations on current developments and time to raise other questions for discussion.  In our August call, we had two excellent presentations from Amanda Groves (nationwide v. statewide classes) and Jon Feczko (government intervention to oppose settlements). If anyone comes across a new development or issue that can be covered in a 5-7 minutes presentation, please contact me or Sharon Stuart (sdstuart@csattorneys.com), our Vice Chair of Communications and you will be heard. 

The second part is communications. We are going to be making more extensive use of our mailing list to keep in touch with Committee members, circulating agendas for the monthly calls, sending notes about upcoming Committee events, and follow-up emails on topics discussed on calls. Likewise, we are going to use the Committee’s page on the IADC website to publish materials of interest to Committee members. 

The third part is expanding our reach. We have moved the monthly calls to an earlier time slot to facilitate more participation by our European/African colleagues, are looking at how to overcome the tyranny of time zones for our Asian/Australian friends. We are also going to focus more on the “multi-party litigation” label of the Committee, as large scale litigation is common throughout the world and relevant to our colleagues in jurisdictions where class actions are only seen as that curious and vexing American custom. We look to nominate an increasingly diverse group of members. 

The fourth is through programming and publications. We have already signed on to co-sponsoring CLE programs for the Midyear Meeting at Santa Barbara, and will continue to work on proposing programs with a significant class actions component. Watch for our Webinars over the coming year. On the publications side, regular Committee Newsletters are open to any member to pen a short note on a recent case or other development, and the Defense Counsel Journal provides an outlet for more extensive, peer-reviewed writing. 

The fifth is through personal contacts. Apart from the calls, we will have a get together at the Annual and Midyear Meetings, as we did at the Lisbon Annual Meeting, and we will look for ways in which members can connect personally in other ways.

In short, we hope that these and other initiatives will allow for the maximum involvement of Committee members and our contribution to the IADC theme for 2018-2019: “One World. One Mission. One IADC.”

The Committee is led by great group of returning and new Vice Chairs: returning Vice Chairs Jon Feczko (Membership), Martin Kasten (Publications), Sharon Stuart (Communications), Sandra Zamora (Diversity), and Tim Fielden (Corporate Counsel), and new Vice Chairs – Amanda Groves (Webinar) and Greg Williams (International). 

Ideas? Comments? Inspiration? Please contact any of us. 

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