When a class certification decision overlaps with merits issues, can a court of appeals deciding an interlocutory appeal from a class certification order also review an earlier decision on a motion to dismiss if it was integral to the class certification order? Yes, according to a new Fourth Circuit decision.

Elegant Massage, LLC v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, No. 22-1853, – F.4th –, 2024 WL 995480 (4th Cir. Mar. 8, 2024), is one of many cases brought against property insurers seeking coverage for business income losses arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. With near unanimity, these lawsuits have been dismissed on Rule 12 motions and almost all those dismissals have been affirmed on appeal. But here the district court denied a motion to dismiss and declined to certify that ruling for interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). It later certified a class of the defendant’s commercial property insurance policyholders in Virginia that were affected by COVID-19 government orders and whose insurance claims were denied. The Fourth Circuit granted the insurer permission to appeal the class certification order under Rule 23(f).

When the case reached the Fourth Circuit, that court had previously affirmed the dismissal of a similar case under West Virginia law. The insurer asked the Fourth Circuit to review the earlier ruling on its motion to dismiss in addition to the class certification order. The Fourth Circuit majority held that it could review the motion to dismiss decision under its pendent appellate jurisdiction. Under that circuit’s jurisprudence, it can exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction if the rulings are ”so interconnected” that “either (1) an issue is inextricably intertwined with a question that is the proper subject of an immediate appeal, or (2) review of a jurisdictionally sufficient issue is necessary to ensure meaningful review of an immediately appealable issue.” (Cleaned up.) The second of those two alternative prongs applied here.  The district court’s ruling on the motion to dismiss was relied upon in its class certification decision, and “was integral to the district court’s later conclusion that the class members could prove their claims through evidence common to the class.” Because the court of appeals could not “meaningfully review the class certification order” while ignoring its own recent decision on the insurance coverage issues that were the subject of the motion to dismiss ruling, pendent appellate jurisdiction was appropriate. The Fourth Circuit then applied its recent decision on the merits issues, finding Virginia law functionally the same as West Virginia law. It therefore reversed both the motion to dismiss and class certification orders, remanding with direction to dismiss the entire case.

Judge Wynn concurred in the reversal of the class certification order, but otherwise dissented. He disagreed with the majority’s finding of pendent appellate jurisdiction, concluding that such jurisdiction should be exercised only in “exceedingly rare circumstances.” He would have reversed the class certification order because, even assuming the district court correctly found the possibility of coverage for the claimed losses, this “would require an individual review of each denied claim to determine whether the loss of business income claimed was due to the [COVID-19] executive orders or to another cause.” He noted that the named plaintiff had “business troubles [that] long predated COVID-19” and had closed before the government orders took effect.  His opinion suggests that he would exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction in this procedural posture only if it would be “impossible” to review the class certification order without reviewing a motion to dismiss decision. He expressed concerns that the majority opinion might unduly open the door to defendants seeking review of merits issues on class certification appeals.

The majority’s opinion puts the Fourth Circuit in line with other circuits. Often courts of appeals have ruled on a merits issue simply because it formed part of the analysis of the class certification issues, without finding it necessary to rely on pendent appellate jurisdiction. See, e.g., Van v. LLR, Inc., 61 F.4th 1053, 1065 (9th Cir. 2023); In re State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 872 F.3d 567, 572-73 (8th Cir. 2017); Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Credit Suisse First Boston, 482 F.3d 372, 381 (5th Cir. 2007).

Think twice about whether the Class Action Fairness Act’s “local controversy” exception applies to your case. Even if more than two-thirds of the proposed class members are citizens of the forum state, there is a significant in-state defendant and the claims asserted arise from conduct in that state, that is not necessarily enough for the plaintiffs to avoid CAFA jurisdiction under a new Fifth Circuit decision. Under this decision, if any of the putative class members’ injuries occurred outside of the forum state, the “local controversy” exception does not apply. This decision could enable defendants to remove some single-state putative class actions that might have been thought unremovable under the “local controversy” exception. And, as the Fifth Circuit also concluded, a denial of remand on this issue was appealable as of right.

The “local controversy” exception provides that a federal district court “shall decline” jurisdiction over a putative class action if more than two-thirds of the proposed class are citizens of the state where suit was filed, at least one defendant is a citizen of that state and satisfies certain requirements, and no other class action “asserting the same or similar factual allegations” against any defendant has been filed during the prior three years. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(4). The additional requirements to qualify as an in-state defendant are that the defendant is one “from whom significant relief is sought by members of the plaintiff class,” “whose alleged conduct forms a significant basis for the claims asserted by the proposed plaintiff class,” and “principal injuries arising from the alleged conduct or any related conduct of each defendant were incurred in the State in which the action was originally filed.” Id. (emphasis added). A lot of lawyers likely assumed that this exception would apply if more than two-thirds of the class are citizens of the forum state and their injuries (but not every single class member’s injury) were suffered in that state. Not so, according to a new Fifth Circuit decision.

In Cheapside Minerals, Ltd. v. Devon Energy Production Co., L.P., Nos. 23-40591, 24-40026, – F.4th –, 2024 WL 886951 (5th Cir. Mar. 1, 2024), the plaintiffs sued for underpayment of oil-and-gas royalties on Texas properties. As you might expect, more than two-thirds of the proposed class members were Texas citizens, but some class members were citizens of other states and the United Kingdom. The defendant successfully argued that that the “principal injuries” requirement means that all putative class members must have suffered their injuries in Texas for the exception to apply. The Fifth Circuit reasoned that the word “principal” means “primary” or “chief,” that “CAFA ties the ‘principal injuries’ sustained to the entire class, not just a subset of it,” and that “[t]here is no exception for cases in which most plaintiffs sustain the principal injury in the forum state but some do not.”  (Emphasis in original.) The court found support for its interpretation in other sections of CAFA that were more specific about how you count class members for certain purposes. The court also concluded that the exception must be construed narrowly. The court noted that CAFA’s legislative history appeared to be inconsistent with the court’s ruling, but found no ambiguity in the statute and therefore did not consider the legislative history.

Given that the only injury in this case was a financial harm, the court concluded that the injuries occurred wherever the class members resided. Because some putative class members were not Texas citizens, the local controversy exception did not apply.

Notably, this decision did not address the mandatory exception to CAFA jurisdiction applicable where “two-thirds or more of the members of all proposed plaintiff classes in the aggregate, and the primary defendants, are citizens of the State in which the action was originally filed.” 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(4)(B).

The Fifth Circuit also agreed with the Eighth and Eleventh Circuits (see my blog post about the Eleventh Circuit decision) that an order remanding a case based on the “local controversy” exception is a remand based on “abstention principles” that is appealable as of right, without the need to petition for permission to appeal under CAFA.  

Overall, this decision seems likely to result in an increased number of single-state class actions being removable to federal court, at least in the Fifth Circuit. It might not be too late to remove such cases where the complaint did not clearly plead an amount in controversy over the $5 million threshold. See, for example, Cutrone v. Mortgage Electronic Reg. Sys., Inc., 749 F.3d 137, 145 (2d Cir. 2014) (blog post).

In today’s world nearly everyone’s name, address and various other pieces of arguably personal information reside on many companies’ computer servers. Sharing of such information between companies has resulted in countless class action suits, in many of which the alleged harm is negligible at best. The Supreme Court’s decision on Article III standing in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021) (my blog post), set some ground rules for these types of suits. It has led to extensive debate in the lower courts regarding how to apply the Court’s test in cases alleging invasion of privacy. The Third Circuit recently weighed in, with the majority of the panel concluding that the fact that information was passed on to a single third-party vendor for a ministerial purpose was insufficient to establish standing.

In Barclift v. Keystone Credit Services, LLC, No. 22-1925, – F.4th –, 2024 WL 655479 (3d Cir. Feb. 16, 2024), the plaintiff sued under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), alleging that the defendant debt collector violated the FDCPA by providing certain information to a third-party mailing vendor for the purpose of sending the plaintiff a debt collection letter. The plaintiff alleged that this purportedly “caused her embarrassment and stress, invaded her privacy, and inflicted reputational harm.” The plaintiff further alleged that the vendor maintained such data electronically for years, and had once had a data breach (unrelated to her information). The district court held that this was insufficient to establish standing, and the Third Circuit affirmed in a 2-1 decision.

The only issue in dispute was whether, for purposes of standing, the plaintiff had alleged an “injury in fact,” which must be “concrete and particularized.” The Third Circuit explained that “intangible harms can give rise to concrete injuries when they bear ‘a close relationship to harms traditionally recognized as providing a basis for lawsuits in American courts,’ such as ‘reputational harms, disclosure of private information, and intrusion upon seclusion.’” In applying this rule, the courts of appeals have applied one of two approaches: (1) an ”element-based approach,” focused on whether the plaintiff alleged all of the elements of a common law tort; or (2) a harm-based approach, focused on “compar[ing] the kind of harm a plaintiff alleges with the kind of harm caused by the comparator tort.” The Third Circuit adopted the harm-based approach as more closely in line with TransUnion.

Applying the harm-based approach, the Third Circuit held that “[i]nformation transmission that neither travels beyond a private intermediary nor creates a sufficient likelihood of external dissemination cannot compare to a traditionally recognized harm that depends on the humiliating effects of public disclosure.” The court further concluded that “the mere assertion that [the vendor’s] employees could access and broadcast [plaintiff’s] personal information to the public is far too speculative to support standing.”

This decision will be helpful to defendants faced with the wave of privacy suits. The debate about where to draw the line, however, will undoubtedly persist. Judge Matey dissented in large part, first criticizing TransUnion, then agreeing with the majority that the harm-based approach was the correct standard, but applying it differently in this case. The dissent would have held that the common law tort of disclosure of private information historically would have found a violation even if the disclosure was to a third party performing a ministerial role, such as a stenographer.

When class certification is denied because the named plaintiff’s claim fails for some reason, sometimes an absent class member will try to intervene rather than filing their own separate suit. Their goal is usually to attempt to certify a class for a longer time period than would otherwise be possible.  If the new plaintiff files a new suit, the statute of limitations period for the proposed class claims would be shorter than if they join a suit that was pending for years. The Sixth Circuit recently addressed this issue, holding that the proposed intervenor could not demonstrate that his rights would be impaired without intervention because he could bring his own separate suit.

Grainger v. Ottawa County, – F.4th –, 2024 WL 64093 (6th Cir. Jan. 5, 2024), is one of various cases seeking to recover against counties or municipalities that foreclosed on properties for nonpayment of taxes and then kept proceeds exceeding the amount owed. (For more background, see my blog post on another Sixth Circuit case involving this issue and the juridical link doctrine.) The district court denied class certification under the Supreme Court’s decision in China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh, 138 S. Ct. 1800 (2018) (see my blog post). Under that decision, the named plaintiff (Grainger) could rely on the pendency of an earlier class action to toll the statute of limitations on his individual claims, but Grainger could not “piggyback” on that earlier class action to bring another class action where, absent class action tolling, his individual claims would have been untimely. Three days later, a new proposed plaintiff (Behovitz) who had a timely claim because his foreclosure proceeding was more recent in time, moved to intervene in Grainger’s case. For various reasons, the district court denied both intervention as of right and permissive intervention.

The Sixth Circuit affirmed, focusing on two of the four requirements for intervention: (1) whether Behovitz had a “substantial interest” in the subject matter of the case; and (2) whether his ability to protect his interest may be impaired without intervention. Behovitz argued that he had a substantial interest in seeking to pursue class claims. The Sixth Circuit concluded that this “likely does not” constitute a sufficient interest to warrant intervention after denial of class certification, noting that “carrying Behovitz’s argument to its logical endpoint could result in ‘multiple bites at the certification apple’ for class counsel” in a manner that seemed improper, but the court declined to decide the case on that basis. Instead, the Sixth Circuit ruled based on the impairment requirement, holding that Behovitz could not demonstrate impairment because he was entitled to bring his own separate suit, which would be timely, and could allege class claims (albeit for a shorter time period). To the extent Behovitz was concerned about a class action settlement that had been approved in another case, his remedy was to appeal that decision or opt out.

The Sixth Circuit also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying permissive intervention. Allowing intervention would further delay the case and potentially require adding more plaintiffs who had properties in other counties, or relitigating issues about whether Behovitz could represent putative class members in counties where his property was not located.

Grainger may aid defendants in seeking to fend off or narrow the scope of successive class actions.

In analyzing class certification issues, courts have said that common issues may predominate in some cases even though damages would have to be determined individually for each class member. But what about where some class members have no damages? Recent federal appellate decisions have said that situation presents an issue of liability, not damages. A subtle distinction, but one that can make all the difference. Where liability cannot be determined class-wide, courts have held that the predominance requirement is not satisfied.

Sampson v. United Services Automobile Association, — F.4th –, 2023 WL 6533181 (5th Cir. Oct. 6, 2023), is one of a series of cases brought against auto insurers challenging how they value vehicles that are total losses. The plaintiffs alleged that the insurer’s use of a software product called CCC violated a Louisiana statute because CCC was not a “generally recognized motor vehicle industry source” within the meaning of the statute. The district court certified a class, and the Fifth Circuit agreed to hear an interlocutory appeal from that ruling.

In seeking class certification, the plaintiffs proposed to use National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) guidebook values, although there were other options that undisputedly would comply with the statute, including Kelley Blue Book (KBB). The insurer presented evidence that 9.2% of claims were valued less than the NADA value, but above the KBB value, so if KBB was chosen, there would be no recovery. The Fifth Circuit vacated the class certification decision, agreeing with a Ninth Circuit decision in a similar case last year (see my blog post here), which held that where vehicles would have to be valued individually, and on some claims there would be no injury, the predominance requirement for class certification was not satisfied. The Fifth Circuit explained that “a district court’s wide discretion to choose an imperfect estimated-damages model at the certification stage does not carry over from the context of damage to the context of liability.” Where the plaintiffs’ evidence could not establish liability (injury) on a class-wide basis, that was insufficient.

A recent Ninth Circuit decision highlights the importance of the defendant clearly pleading the basis for alleging the amount in controversy in a notice of removal under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). In this case, after the defendant prevailed on a summary judgment motion and the plaintiff appealed, the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded for the district court to determine the amount in controversy.

In Moe v. GEICO Indemnity Co., — F.4th –, 2023 WL 4483690 (9th Cir. July 12, 2023), the plaintiff filed a putative statewide class action in Montana against GEICO. He alleged that GEICO improperly failed to pay him, and other third-party claimants injured in accidents for which GEICO drivers were determined to be responsible, collection fees and interest on medical bills, and lost wages. In removing to federal court, GEICO’s notice of removal relied on a declaration from an employee stating “that he ‘generated data and can state that the claims paid by GEICO Indemnity Co., and the damage exposure, not liability, to the potential members of the putative class proposed by Plaintiff exceeds the sum or value of $5 million in the aggregate.’” No further explanation of the data and no calculations were provided. At the district court level, neither the plaintiff nor the district court challenged the propriety of removal. The district court granted summary judgment on the named plaintiff’s claim, and he appealed.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit questioned sua sponte whether the $5 million threshold for the amount in controversy was satisfied. While the Supreme Court has held in Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens, 574 U.S. 81 (2014), that evidence supporting the amount in controversy is not required to accompany a notice of removal, a “plausible assertion of the amount at issue” is required. Here, the Ninth Circuit found GEICO’s notice of removal and accompanying declaration to be lacking. It explained that the plaintiff’s “claimed damages in his individual claim are under $1,000,” “there is little indication what the average amount of damages the purported class members may have suffered,” and “it is unclear how large the purported class may be.” 2023 WL 4483690, at *3. The Ninth Circuit therefore vacated the summary judgment ruling (without addressing its merits), and remanded for the district court to determine whether the amount in controversy requirement was satisfied.

As I see it, a key practice pointer here for defense counsel is to include enough allegations in the notice of removal (and if desired, although not required, an accompanying declaration) to demonstrate how the amount in controversy is being estimated. Here, a conclusory assertion that data existed to support it was not enough. Some specifics as to the nature of the data and what it reflected might have been enough to avoid a remand, and then presumably another appeal. Sometimes it can be helpful to offer the court more than one method of calculation.

A recent Ninth Circuit decision clarified that the benefit to the class is the “touchstone for determining the reasonableness of attorneys’ fees in a class action.” Under this decision, the fee should not be based on the maximum potential class recovery (as some courts have held for many years), or a lodestar amount that bears no relationship to the actual class recovery. It will be interesting to see how this decision impacts settlement negotiations in putative class actions in the Ninth Circuit and beyond.

In Lowery v. Rhapsody International, Inc., — F.4th –, 2023 WL  3857499 (9th Cir. June 7, 2023), a putative class action was filed against a music streaming service, Rhapsody, on behalf of copyright owners whose music was played on the service without a license. About 98% of the putative class members accepted a settlement that was negotiated with the National Music Publishers Association outside of this case, leaving a small number of putative class members remaining. A settlement of this putative class action was negotiated early in the case. Under the terms of the settlement, putative class members were required to make claims to receive compensation, and the total amount potentially available was $20 million. But because so few claims were made (in large part because of the prior settlement), Rhapsody paid only $52,841.05 to the putative class. The plaintiffs’ attorneys nevertheless claimed $2.5 million in fees on a lodestar basis. A magistrate judge recommended a fee award of $860,000 but the district judge rejected that and awarded $1.7 million. These numbers surprise me given what the opinion says about how the settlement was reached early in the case, with most of the efforts focused on negotiating the settlement, not litigation activities. But the opinion doesn’t delve into how those large lodestar numbers were reached.

The Ninth Circuit reversed, instructing the district court on remand to determine the “actual value to the class members and then award attorneys’ fees proportional and reasonable to the benefit received by the class.” The court explained that “courts must consider the actual or realistically anticipated benefit to the class—not the maximum or hypothetical amount—in assessing the value of a class action settlement.” While a lodestar cross-check was appropriate, where the lodestar amount “will greatly exceed 25% of the value of the settlement … that is a major red flag that signifies that lawyers are being overcompensated and that they achieved only meager success for the class.” The court emphasized that “[t]he key factor in assessing the reasonableness of attorneys’ fees is the benefit to the class members.” The court noted that there may be some circumstances where other factors come into play, such as civil rights cases or even some copyright cases where there is a societal benefit or “substantial nonmonetary relief.” 

This is arguably something of a sea change for class action settlements. For many years, courts have regularly approved attorneys’ fee awards based on the maximum potential recovery. Some judges or commentators might assume that this will simply result in plaintiffs’ attorneys accepting lower compensation in lower value cases. But such deals are never easy to negotiate. The plaintiffs’ bar tries to get the same or better hourly rates as the defense bar. Will defendants be forced to pay more because that is the only way a settlement can be reached? Or will defendants force more cases through class certification, summary judgment or trial? Or will there be more settlements that include no agreement on the fee, instead having the court decide the fee on a disputed application? That can be risky for the defendant, but maybe not so much now in the Ninth Circuit. Will nonmonetary relief be negotiated and relied upon more often in seeking settlement approval? In my mind, all of these may happen depending on the circumstances of the case.

Federal courts of appeals have disagreed on whether a named plaintiff in a proposed class action can sue defendants who have not injured that plaintiff but allegedly have injured putative class members.  This is not an uncommon scenario. Plaintiffs often attempt to bring putative class actions that are broader than their own claims, suing defendants that did not injure them. The Sixth Circuit recently weighed in on this issue, rejecting the “juridical link” doctrine and holding that a named plaintiff has no standing to sue a defendant that did not injure that plaintiff. This is a thorough opinion that will be useful for defendants on this issue.

In Fox v. Saginaw County, – F.4th –, 2023 WL 3143922 (6th Cir. Apr. 28, 2023), a Michigan County foreclosed on the plaintiff’s property because he failed to pay property taxes. The county sold the property for much more than the amount of back taxes owed but the plaintiff did not receive any of the surplus. In other litigation, this practice has been held to be an unconstitutional taking. (Coincidentally, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on Friday regarding whether an essentially-identical practice in Minnesota is unconstitutional, with SCOTUSblog reporting that the justices appeared inclined to rule for the homeowner). The plaintiff in this case sued not only the county that had taken his property but also 26 other Michigan counties that allegedly had harmed putative class members in substantially the same manner. The district court certified that entire class, and the Sixth Circuit accepted an interlocutory appeal under Rule 23(f).

The Seventh Circuit has held that under the “juridical link” doctrine a proposed class representative can sue defendants that did not injure the class representative if the class members would have standing and the named plaintiff can otherwise satisfy the requirements for class certification. But the Second and Eighth Circuits have rejected that theory (see my blog post on the Second Circuit decision).

In Fox, the Sixth Circuit addressed this issue thoroughly, rejecting the “juridical link” doctrine as contrary to Supreme Court precedent for three reasons. First, the Supreme Court has generally rejected the notion that standing should be evaluated differently in a putative class action as compared with an individual suit, requiring that named plaintiffs establish a personal, individual injury and generally limiting the scope of any class claims consistent with the named plaintiff’s claim. Second, given that standing must be established at the outset of litigation before a class has been certified, logically standing cannot depend on injuries to putative class members that are not yet parties when the case is brought. Third, the efficiency rationale for the “juridical link” doctrine cannot override the separation-of-powers rationale for Article III standing requirements.

Given the Supreme Court’s decisions looking to historical practice in evaluating standing issues, the Sixth Circuit’s opinion included an interesting discussion of some of the historical predecessors of the modern class action in English courts, including “bills of peace,” whereby, for example, “[t]he named tenants of a manor might represent all of the tenants in a dispute against the manor’s lord over hunting rights on manorial lands.” This did not support the “juridical link” doctrine because no historical evidence was found of “bills of peace in which, say, named tenants sued not just the lord of their own manor on behalf of their cotenants but also the lords of all other manors.”

The Sixth Circuit also noted some problems that might be encountered on remand. While the plaintiff might be able to find 26 other named plaintiffs from the other counties to join him, thereby avoiding the standing problem, he would face other obstacles that the district court had not addressed. Proving the fair market value of every putative class member’s property could potentially overwhelm any common questions. The district court also would have to address whether individualized defenses could be litigated in a manageable way, and how mortgages and other liens would be addressed. If class certification were sought again, the district court would have to “forecast how the parties will conduct the litigation from the certification stage through the trial to the final judgment.”

Last week the Second Circuit issued a new decision affirming, with one exception, the approval of a $5.6 billion revised class action settlement in the long-running Visa/Mastercard antitrust litigation. (See my blog post on the Second Circuit’s reversal of a prior settlement in 2016.)  The opinion and two concurrences in Fikes Wholesale, Inc. v. HSBC Bank USA, N.A., — F.4th –, 2023 WL 2506455 (2d Cir. Mar. 15, 2023) addressed various issues, two of which I’ll discuss here.    

First, objectors to the settlement challenged service awards to the named plaintiffs totaling $900,000, including two awards of $200,000 each, approximately 100 times the amount they would get as part of the settlement. I don’t think I’ve seen a case with service awards anywhere near that high, but this settlement was obviously of extraordinary size. The majority opinion concluded that named plaintiff awards were “likely impermissible” under a Supreme Court decision from 1881. In that case, which long predates the creation of the modern class action, the Supreme Court concluded that a creditor bringing suit on behalf of others could not be compensated for services and expenses in bringing suit. In 2020, the Eleventh Circuit held that the Supreme Court decision precluded the use of named plaintiff service awards in class actions (see my blog post) but other circuits have disagreed (see, for example, my summary of a Ninth Circuit decision on this issue). In Fikes Wholesale, the Second Circuit panel concluded that, while it agreed with the Eleventh Circuit, it was bound by two prior Second Circuit decisions upholding named plaintiff awards, although without analyzing the old Supreme Court case in any detail. We might well see a petition for rehearing en banc (but those are very rarely granted in the Second Circuit) or a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court on that issue. The Second Circuit did find the service awards to be excessive in one respect—to the extent the amount awarded was based on work performed by the plaintiffs lobbying for legislative reform, the district court was instructed to reduce the award accordingly.  

From the defense perspective, I’m not sure there is much that can be done here other than to negotiate the best deal you can, and have a provision in the settlement agreement that the amount of the award is solely in the district court’s discretion and if a lower amount (or even nothing) is awarded, the settlement remains fully enforceable.

Second, in Fikes Wholesale, objectors challenged the fairness of the settlement for newer merchants, who would get minimal monetary payments but release their claims going forward for five years into the future. The Second Circuit declined to reach this issue because the settlement agreement had a severability provision stating that the release “extend[s] to, but only to, the fullest extent permissible by federal law.” So even if part of the release was not enforceable, the settlement remained fully enforceable. The question of whether the release of future claims is enforceable will have to be decided in a future case, when a new suit is filed and then one or more defendants seek to enforce the release.

The release language here is an interesting technique that might be worth considering in some class action settlements. It prevented a possible (and it appears serious) concern about the scope of the release from derailing the enforceability of this settlement. But the defendants will likely have to deal with that in future litigation, and Judge Jacobs’s concurrence casts doubt on whether the release of future claims will be enforceable as to the newer merchants. Defendants trying to buy complete peace in entering into a class settlement may not want to agree to this type of severability clause and leave an issue like that for another day.

A recent Ninth Circuit decision illustrates how defendants can use evidence on an individualized defense to potentially defeat class certification.

In Van v. LLR, Inc., — F.4th –, 2023 WL 2469909 (9th Cir. Mar. 13, 2023), the defendant allegedly charged sales tax that was not owed by Alaska purchasers on online purchases. While the defendant later refunded the amounts, it did not pay interest on the amounts refunded. The Ninth Circuit concluded that, even if this interest was a fraction of a cent for some class members, that was sufficient for Article III standing. However, the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded the district court’s certification of the class because the defendant had introduced evidence of eighteen examples of discounts to class members that offset the sales tax. Given that a total of 13,680 class members had received discounts, “an inquiry into the circumstances and motivations behind each of the 13,680 discounts might be necessary … which could potentially involve up to 13,680 depositions and months of trial.”

The Ninth Circuit explained that “[w]hen a defendant substantiates such an individualized issue in this way,”  in evaluating predominance, “the district court must determine … whether a class-member-by-class-member assessment of the individualized issue will be unnecessary or workable.”

This case is a good example of how a defendant can potentially defeat class certification by developing, through analysis of its own records, an individualized defense to a substantial number of putative class members’ claims.