Declining to expressly decide whether the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act could be applied to all members of a nationwide class, the court reversed on Predominance, concluding that “each third-party payor, relying on PBMs and P & T Committees, made individualized decisions concerning the benefits that would be available to its members for whom Vioxx was prescribed.” Addressing the reliance issue, the court noted that, while traditional “reliance” was not required under the CFA, the plaintiffs were nevertheless required to demonstrate “ascertainable loss”. Yet, “to the extent that plaintiff intends to rely on a single expert to establish a price effect in place of a demonstration of an ascertainable loss or in place of proof of a causal nexus between defendant’s acts and the claimed damages, however, plaintiff’s proofs would fail. That proof theory would indeed be the equivalent of fraud on the market, a theory we have not extended to CFA claims.” The court further reversed on the issue of Superiority, due to the size and sophistication of the entities and the amounts they were claiming. See International Union of Operating Engineers v. Merck & Co., 2007 WL 2493917 (N.J. Sept. 6, 2007).
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