Wystan Ackerman focuses his practice on three main areas: class actions, appeals, and insurance coverage litigation.
Class Actions
Wystan chairs the firm's Class Action Team and writes the blog Class Actions Insider. He is one of Connecticut's leading class action defense lawyers, and has a national class action defense practice. Wystan has been involved in defending more than 60 class actions in numerous jurisdictions, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and California. In many of those cases, he prevailed on a dispositive motion. He successfully petitioned the United States Supreme Court to grant certiorari and was co-counsel on the merits in Standard Fire Insurance Company v. Knowles, 133 S. Ct. 1345 (2013), in which the Court rejected a plaintiff's attempt to evade federal jurisdiction by stipulating that the amount sought would not exceed the $5 million threshold under the Class Action Fairness Act. Wystan has defended putative class action cases involving insurance and financial services, products liability, data breaches, healthcare, consumer contracts, and securities. He has extensive experience defending major insurers in putative class actions involving homeowners' insurance, auto insurance, underwriting and business practices, and also advises insurers regarding the defense of their insureds in class actions. He has chaired the Class Action Special Litigation Group of the Commercial Litigation Committee of the Defense Research Institute (DRI), and is currently vice chair of the Class Action and Multidistrict Section of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel (FDCC).
