Case ID: f3d_869/html/0013-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "KAYATTA, Circuit Judge,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Michelle CARTER; Jonathan Cessna; Alicia Gentile; Sonia Herrera; Jenny Marazzi; Megan Peterson; Sven P. Vogtland; David Walls; Kristina Pearson; Eric Terrell; Elizabeth Poynter; Eric Capdeville, Plaintiffs, Respondents, Michael Feuer; Martin Hommel; Kami Raleigh; Bridget Becnel Delivorias; Karen Finney; Amani El-Jandali; Marvin Catalan, Plaintiffs, v. The DIAL CORPORATION, a/k/a, Dial Corporation, a/k/a, The Dial Corporation, Inc., Defendant, Petitioner, Henkel Consumer Goods, Inc., Defendant.
    No. 17-8009
    United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
    JUDGMENT Entered: July 31, 2017
    Randall Seth Crompton, Eric D. Holland, Gerard B. Schneller, Holland Law Firm, St. Louis, MO, Lucy J. Karl, Sha-heen & Gordon PA, Concord, NH, Adam J. Levitt, DiCello Levitt & Casey LLC, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Respondent MICHELLE CARTER.
    Randall Seth Crompton, Eric D. Holland, Gerard B. Schneller, Steven Stolze, Holland Law Firm, St. Louis, MO, Lucy J. Karl, Shaheen & Gordon PA, Concord, NH, Adam J. Levitt, DiCello Levitt & Casey LLC, Chicago, IL, David C. Rash, Rash Law Offices PA, Weston, FL, Charles E. Schaffer, Levin Sedran & Ber-man, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff-Respondent JONATHAN CESSNA.
    Jordan Lucas Chaikin, Chaikin Law Firm PLLC, Fort Myers, FL, Fred R. Rosenthal, Parker Waichman LLP, Port Washington, NY, for Plaintiff MICHAEL FEUER.
    Jayne A. Goldstein, Shepherd Finkel-man Miller & Shah, Ft Lauderdale, FL, Thomas D. Mauriello, Mauriello Law Firm, San Clemente, CA, James C. Shah, Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah LLP, Media, PA, for Plaintiff-Respondent ALICIA GENTILE.
    Tamar G. Arminak, Mark J. Geragos, Shelley Kaufman, Geragos & Geragos PC, Los Angeles, CA, Lucy J. Karl, Shaheen & Gordon PA, Concord, NH, Adam J. Levitt, DiCello Levitt & Casey LLC, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Respondent SONIA HERRERA.
    Stuart A. Davidson, Robbins, Geller, Rudman & Dowd LLP, Boca Raton, FL, Mark J. Dearman, Cullin A. O’Brien, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, Melville, NY, Edward K. O’Brien, O’Brien Law Firm, P.C., Manchester, NH, for Plaintiff MARTIN HOMMEL.
    Douglas P. Dehler, O’Neil Cannon Holl-inan DeJong & Laing SC, Milwaukee, WI, for Plaintiff-Respondent MEGAN PETERSON.
    Richard J. Arsenault, Neblett Beard & Arsenault, Alexandria, LA, Jordan Lucas Chaikin, Chaikin Law Firm PLLC, Fort Myers, FL, Lucy J. Karl, Shaheen & Gordon PA, Concord, NH, Adam J. Levitt, DiCello Levitt & Casey LLC, Chicago, IL, Fred R. Rosenthal, Parker Waichman LLP, Port Washington, NY, for Plaintiff-Respondent SVEN P. VOGTLAND.
    Randall Seth Crompton, Eric D. Holland, Gerard B. Schneller,' Holland Law Firm, St. Louis, MO, Charles E. Schaffer, Levin Sédran & Berman, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff-Respondent DAVID WALLS.
    Edward K. O’Brien, O’Brien Law Firm, P.C., Manchester, NH, for Plaintiff KAMI RALEIGH.
    
      Daniel E. Becnel, Jr., Salvadore Christina, Jr., Becnel Law Firm LLC, Reserve, LA, Robert M. Becnel, Law Offices of Robert M. Becnel, Laplace, LA, Matthew B. Moreland, Law Office of Matthew B. Moreland, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiffs BRIDGET BECNEL DELIVORIAS, KAREN FINNEY.
    Lucy J. Karl, Shaheen & Gordon PA, Concord, NH, Adam J, Levitt, DiCello Levitt & Casey LLC, Joseph J. Siprut, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Respondent KRISTINA PEARSON.
    Miriam Leigh Schimmel, Andrew Joseph Sokolowski, Initiative Legal Group, Los Angeles, CA, for Plaintiff AMANI EL-JANDALI.
    Reginald Von Terrell, Terrell Law Group, Oakland, CA, for Plaintiff-Respondent ERIC TERRELL.
    Sean T. Keith, Keith Miller Butler Schneider & Pawlick PLLC, for Plaintiff MARVIN CATALAN.
    Lucy J. Karl, Shaheen & Gordon PA, Concord, NH, for Plaintiff-Respondent ELIZABETH POYNTER.
    Salvadore Christina, Jr., Becnel Law Firm LLC, Reserve, LA, Jim S. Hall, Hall Law Office LLC, Metairie, LA, Matthew B. Moreland, Law Office of Matthew B. Moreland, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiff-Respondent ERIC CAPDEVTLLE.
    Eugene F. Assaf, Jr., Tracie Lynn Bryant, Paul D. Clement, Jeffrey Matthew Harris, Matthew Rowen, Edwin John U, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Washington, DC, Karl A. Bekeny, Tucker Ellis LLP, Cleveland, OH, Paul E. Benson, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, Milwaukee, WI, Amy Bloom, Beasley Kramer & Galardi, P.A., Patricia Elaine Lowry, Squire Sanders <& Dempsey LLP, West Palm Beach, FL, Elizabeth M. Chiarello, Richard D. Raskin, Allison W. Reimann, Eugene A. Schoon, Sidley Austin LLP, Chicago, IL, John E. Galvin, III, Jonathan H. Garside, Fox Gal-vin, LLC, St. Louis, MO, Robert Harrex Miller, Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green PA, Manchester, NH, Chad W. Pekron, Robert Ryan Younger, Quattlebaum Grooms Tull & Burrow PLLC, Little Rock, AR, John C. Theisen, Theisen Bowers & Associates LLC, Fort Wayne, IN, Robert C. Tucker, Cleveland, OH, for Defendant-Petitioner.
    Before Torruella, Thompson, and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
   Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f), the defendant-petitioner seeks leave from this court to appeal the district court’s grant of class certification in the underlying multi-district litigation. As an initial matter, the defendant-petitioner's motion for leave to file a reply is granted. The tendered reply is accepted for fíling and has been considered by the court. Having carefully considered the parties’ filings and relevant portions of the record, we conclude that the requirements for interlocutory review have not been met here. See Waste Mgmt. Holdings, Inc. v. Mowbray, 208 F.3d 288, 293-94 (1st Cir. 2000) (setting out factors to be considered when deciding whether to allow review pursuant to Rule 23(f)). Specifically, we conclude that the defendant-petitioner has failed to demonstrate that the district court’s Rule 23 analysis is sufficiently “questionable” to warrant immediate review. Id. at 293. Accordingly, the petition for leave to appeal is denied.

KAYATTA, Circuit Judge,

dissenting from denial of petition for permission to appeal.

Two years ago, a divided panel of this court proposed sua sponte that plaintiffs could use consumer affidavits to establish injury at the liability stage of a Rule 23(b)(8) class action. See In re Nexium Antitrust Litig., 777 F.3d 9, 20 (1st Cir. 2015). On the basis of this judicially crafted mechanism for separating injured class members from uninjured ones, the Nexium majority upheld the certification of a class that potentially included tens of thousands of uninjured persons. See id. at 32. For a variety of reasons, the Nexium majority’s proposal struck me as a bad idea. In particular, allowing plaintiffs to carry their burdens of proof on the question of injury by filing hundreds of thousands of affidavits meant either that the defendant would have no practical ability to challenge the affidavits, or that the class action would become unmanageable. See id. at 33-35 (Kayatta, J., dissenting).

The affidavit proposal was never implemented in Nexium, as the case was tried by a jury before the panel perhaps unnecessarily issued its opinion. Here, however, in a consumer class action challenging representations made by the defendant as to the antibacterial properties of its soap, the district court has ruled that the fact that a particular person has even bought the soap can be established through the submission of an affidavit so stating. See In re Dial Complete Mktg. & Sales Practices Litig., 312 F.R.D. 36, 52 (D.N.H. 2015). In a case involving an individual consumer, the defendant could easily challenge such a claim, and a jury would decide whether the individual claimant was being truthful. I have trouble seeing how the same can be accomplished in this case, which, like Nexi-um, involves potentially hundreds of thousands of claimants. Absent any explanation from the district court as to how it will resolve that mystery in a manner that is not only “consistent with defendants’ Seventh Amendment and due process rights,” see Nexium, 777 F.3d at 14 (majority opinion), but also manageable within the meaning of Rule 23(b)(3), see Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3)(D), I believe that class certification was at best premature.

Sooner or later, this court will have to wrestle with the issues raised by the district court’s approach, which follows the approach established sua sponte by the majority in Nexium. Otherwise, the casual reliance on “say-so” affidavits without any analysis of whether and how the assertions in such affidavits might be reasonably challenged will eventually eliminate the requirements of Rule 23(b)(3) and turn courts into claims administrators who pay no heed to the guarantees of the Seventh Amendment. Because the instant case provides us with the opportunity to weigh in with some modicum of rigor before any further mischief can result, I respectfully dissent from the denial of the petition for interlocutory review under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f).