NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

DANETTE M. MOORE; ALANNA 

HARRISON; ALISA VALDEZ; LATRESA 

MYERS, individually and on behalf of all 

others similarly situated, 

Plaintiffs-Appellees, 

LINDSEY LOOMIS,

Objector-Appellant,

 v. 

PETSMART, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 16-16124

D.C. No. 

5:12-cv-03577-EJD

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Edward J. Davila, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted December 7, 2017

San Francisco, California

Before: GRABER and N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judges, and SIMON,** District Judge.

Lindsey Loomis (“Loomis”) challenges the district court’s approval of a 

 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The Honorable Michael H. Simon, United States District Judge for the 

District of Oregon, sitting by designation.

FILED

MAR 29 2018

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2

class action settlement and the court’s award of attorney’s fees. The district court 

struck Loomis’s objections on the ground that her filing, made on the last day to 

file objections, was unsigned and this omission was not promptly corrected after 

being called to the attention of Loomis and her counsel. Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(a). The 

district court also rejected Loomis’s objections on the merits. We affirm.

Current and former employees of PetSmart, Inc. (“PetSmart”) filed a 

putative class action alleging various labor-law violations. After mediation, the 

parties reached an initial class settlement. On February 10, 2015, Plaintiffs moved 

for final approval of the proposed settlement agreement and for attorney’s fees and 

costs. The court set February 11, 2015, as the final date for any class member to 

file objections to either the proposed settlement or the requested award of 

attorney’s fees.

Loomis worked as both a pet stylist and in other non-exempt positions 

between October 2008 and May 2014, making her a member of both settlement 

classes. On February 11, 2015, the deadline for objections, Loomis filed unsigned 

objections to both the proposed settlement and the requested fee award. In her 

objections, Loomis, acting pro per, stated: “Please note that I have retained counsel 

who will be appearing on my behalf and request that I not be personally contacted 

by any counsel in this matter.”

At a March 12, 2015 fairness hearing, attorney Burke Huber appeared on 
3

behalf of Loomis. Huber presented a black-and-white photocopy of Loomis’s 

objection, which had a signature in blue ink and contained a blue “original” stamp. 

After a discussion with Huber and class counsel, the district court concluded that 

there was insufficient proof that Loomis’s objection was timely filed. The district 

court then struck Loomis’s objection as untimely. The court, however, also 

considered the merits of Loomis’s objections and found them to be unpersuasive. 

The district court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for final approval of the proposed class 

settlement agreement and granted in part and denied in part Plaintiffs’ motions for 

attorney’s fees and costs. Loomis’s timely appeal followed.

When a district court strikes an objection and the inquiry is essentially 

factual, we review for abuse of discretion. United States v. Mateo-Mendez, 215 

F.3d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir. 2000). We review a district court’s approval of a class 

action settlement for “clear abuse of discretion.” In re Bluetooth Headset Prods. 

Liab. Litig., 654 F.3d 935, 940 (9th Cir. 2011). We review the court’s award of 

attorney’s fees and costs to class counsel, as well as its method of calculation, for 

abuse of discretion. In re Online DVD-Rental Antitrust Litig., 779 F.3d 934, 942 

(9th Cir. 2015). Accordingly, “we must affirm unless the district court applied the

wrong legal standard or its findings of fact were illogical, implausible, or without 

support in the record.” Radcliffe v. Experian Info. Sols. Inc., 715 F.3d 1157, 1162-

63 (9th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted).
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Rule 11(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides: “Every 

pleading, written motion, and other paper must be signed by at least one attorney 

of record in the attorney’s name—or by a party personally if the party is 

unrepresented.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(a). Rule 11 also provides that a “court must 

strike an unsigned paper unless the omission is promptly corrected after being 

called to the attorney’s or party’s attention.” Id. (emphasis added). Loomis 

suggests that it is unclear whether objections must be signed. As a document filed

with the court, however, the objection is an “other paper” under Rule 11 and, thus, 

must be signed. The documents that Huber provided to the district court did not 

reflect the date on which they had been signed. The court noted that Huber 

provided a black-and-white photocopy of a document dated February 11, 2014. 

Below this date was a signature in blue ink. As the court stated, if the original 

document was filed on February 11 and had been signed at that time, then the 

signature would also appear in black on the black and white photocopy. Huber 

could not answer the court’s question of when his client had signed the document. 

The court then explained that the information presented left open the factual 

question of when the document had been signed. Because February 11 was the last 

date to file objections to the class settlement and because Loomis neither signed 

the objection on February 11 nor corrected it promptly, the district court struck 

Loomis’s objection as untimely.
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On this record, it was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to 

conclude that there was insufficient evidence to find that Loomis had not timely 

filed a signed objection. Accordingly, the district court did not err in striking 

Loomis’s objection. Nevertheless, because the district court considered the merits 

of Loomis’s objections, so will we.

Loomis argues that the Pet Stylist Class and the Non-Exempt Employee 

Class were competing for payments from the same pot of money and that this fact 

constitutes an inherent conflict of interest between these two classes, such that they 

may not be represented by the same counsel. PetSmart and class counsel respond 

that the interests of the two classes are aligned. Each class asserted claims for 

unpaid wages, failure to provide adequate meal and rest periods, failure to provide 

adequate wage statements, and waiting-time penalties.

Unlike Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591 (1997), this case 

does not involve an attempt to settle both pending claims and future claims. 

Although the claims of one class purportedly are more valuable than the claims of 

another class, a difference in value of claims does not necessarily mean that there 

is a structural, or fundamental, conflict of interest requiring separate counsel. To 

find that a conflict within a class is fundamental, and thus requires separate 

counsel, there must be some actual, apparent conflict beyond the mere unequal 

allocation of settlement funds. When class members disagree over the type or form 
6

of relief sought, or where class members have claims that are vastly different from 

one another, as in Amchem, there may be a fundamental conflict. See In re Mego 

Fin. Corp. Sec. Litig., 213 F.3d 454, 462 (9th Cir. 2000) (“[A] conflict between 

class members regarding the most favorable measure of damages can create a 

potential conflict of interest between members of the class.”).

On the other hand, when class members essentially seek the same thing from 

the defendant and differ only with respect to the amount or value of their claims, 

absent vast differences or some other evidence of unfairness, there is no 

fundamental conflict sufficient to defeat adequacy. See id. at 463 (noting that 

keeping class members together was proper because each group was “allegedly 

damaged by the fraud” complained of and “the necessity for disposing of all 

potential claims justifies the inclusion of” both classes). That is the case here. The 

district court did not abuse its discretion in approving the class action settlement 

and awarding attorney’s fees.1

AFFIRMED.

 

1 Loomis’s objection to the award of attorney’s fees rests solely on the asserted 

conflict of interest of class counsel. In the absence of such a conflict, the challenge 

to the award of fees necessarily fails.