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West v. AK Steel Case Update, April, 2007

Decision of the Court of Appeals issued April 20, 2007 affirming the District Court's judgment in favor of the Class. Court of Appeals Affirms!

The Court of Appeals, in a decision entered April 20, 2007 affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of the Class. A copy of the appellate court's decision, rejecting each of the defendants' arguments, can be found by clicking here. (PDF)

In early May of this year, AK Steel petitioned the Court of Appeals, asking that our appeal be reheard by all fourteen active judges of the appellate court. Our response, opposing AK Steel's petition, was filed in June. On August 8 the Court of Appeals entered an Order denying AK Steel's petition for rehearing. The Order indicates that none of the Sixth Circuit's active judges even requested a vote on AK's petition.

But we are still some distance from concluding our suit. The defendants have informed us that they will be filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking that Court to hear our case. That petition doesn't need to be filed until November 6. The Supreme Court probably will not decide until the Spring or Summer of 2008 whether it will hear our case. If the Supreme Court takes our case, we won't have a decision until sometime in 2009 at the earliest.

Even if the Supreme Court doesn't take our case, there would still a few steps that must be taken and completed before there can be any distributions to Class Members, such as a determination by the district court of the manner by which distributions are to be made, in the course of which it might be decided whether Class Members will be given a roll-over option.

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