[On June 11, 2018], the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split regarding whether the filing of a class action lawsuit tolls the statute of limitations for putative class members to file their own class actions. In China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh, 584 U.S. , 2018 WL 2767565 (June 11, 2018), the Court held that so-called American Pipe tolling—which allows a putative class member to file an individual claim upon denial of class certification, even if the statute of limitations would have by that time otherwise run out—does not permit the maintenance of a follow-on class action past the expiration of the statute of limitations.
American Pipe tolling was first recognized by the Court over forty years ago in American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah, 414 U.S. 538 (1974), where the Court held that the timely filing of a class action tolls the applicable statute of limitations for all persons encompassed by the class complaint. In American Pipe, the Court further ruled that, where class action status has been denied, members of the failed class could timely intervene as individual plaintiffs in the still-pending action, shorn of its class character. In 1983, the Court clarified in Crown, Cork & Seal Co. Inc. v. Parker, 462 U.S. 345 (1983) that American Pipe’s tolling rule is not dependent on intervening in or joining an existing suit; it applies as well to absent class members who, after denial of class certification, prefer to bring an individual suit once the economies of a class action are no longer available.
