Can lawyers privately contract clients and absent class members out of a Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 class action?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Kellogg, et al. lawsuit and this petition address whether lawyers can mislead 60,000 corn growers across the United States into signing 40 percent contingent fee retainer contracts to pursue individual lawsuits, exclude those corn growers from pending Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 class actions without their knowledge and informed consent, and then take their property interests in the litigation proceeds without their approval. In law school, these transgressions, if presented as a hypothetical, would be disparaged. But in the harsh reality of federal court multidistrict litigation (MDL), the transgressions are accepted as the costs of efficiency, as MDL judges cannot be judged, class action and mass tort lawyers must get paid, and the Fifth Amendment due process rights of 60,000 American corn growers are trampled in the dirt. The Tenth Circuit decisions in this case — denying jurisdiction to review an MDL transfer decision, allowing the lawyers to privately contract clients and absent class members out of a Rule 23 class action, disregarding the judicial recusal mandates that attach to a legal malpractice lawsuit transferred to the MDL judge who was misled by the lawyers to allow the private contract opt-outs, and disregarding 247 years of American jurisprudence addressing attorney deceit — should be reviewed by this Court on the merits. The questions presented are: 1. Can a party who unsuccessfully challenges a Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL Panel) ii QUESTIONS PRESENTED — Continued transfer decision by mandamus petition during the litigation under 28 U.S.C. § 1407(e), again challenge the transfer decision through an appeal of a final judgment by the MDL district court dismissing the lawsuit claims? 2. Can lawyers privately contract clients and absent class members out of a Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 class action, and thereby deprive the clients and absent class members of the individual notice and opt-out procedures enshrined in Rule 23? 3. Does an MDL district court judge have a conflict of interest that requires his recusal or disqualification from a lawsuit transferred to the MDL under the 28 U.S.C. §§ 455(b) and (e) recusal mandates of the United States Congress and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause’s guarantee of an impartial adjudicator, when the judge breached fiduciary obligations to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit transferred to the MDL and has knowledge of contested facts in that lawsuit? 4. Can an MDL district court judge dismiss a legal malpractice lawsuit transferred to an MDL through a rationale that the lawsuit claims, which are not a collateral attack on the MDL settlement and the fee awards, are rendered moot by the settlement and the district court’s fee award decisions in the settlement proceedings?