The Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in Vinole v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., – F.3d –, 2009 WL 1926444 (9th Cir. July 7, 2009), established precedent in this Circuit: A defendant may move to deny class certification before a plaintiff moves to have the class certified, and need not wait until the close of discovery to do so. The court also affirmed the denial of the certification at issue because individual issues of employees’ eligibility for wage and hour exemptions predominated over common issues.

The key takeaways from Vinole are....

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