Derek Brandt Debuts as Columnist for Legal Publication
Shareholder Derek Brandt was recently accepted as a columnist for Chicago Lawyer Magazine. Throughout 2012, he will write a column the magazine has titled the “Complex Litigation Corner.”
Chicago Lawyer is circulated among 9,000 lawyers, judges, firm administrators and government officials in Chicago and throughout Illinois.
Derek’s first installment about collective, class-action battles was published in this month’s magazine. A portion of it is copied below.
Collective, Class-Action Battles Wage On
By Derek Y. Brandt
Simmons Hanly Conroy
The battle lines in the war over the collective interest are all around us. Our neighbor states are enduring skirmishes about the ability of public employees to act in a collective fashion. Readers of this magazine will be equally aware that fights over class-action litigation also remain white-hot, fueled in no small part by last year’s mega-blockbuster Supreme Court decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. —, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (June 20, 2011). Dubbed “one of the most expansive class actions ever[,]” 131 S.Ct. at 2547, Dukes has received the preponderance of attention from legal commentators.
