Source: https://www.uclpractitioner.com/2016/09/new-ninth-circuit-class-certification-opinion-ruiz-torres-v-mercer-canyons-inc.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 06:16:29+00:00

Document:
The UCL Practitioner: New Ninth Circuit class certification opinion: Ruiz Torres v. Mercer Canyons Inc.
New Ninth Circuit class certification opinion: Ruiz Torres v. Mercer Canyons Inc.
I hope everyone had a restful Labor Day weekend. Last week, in Ruiz Torres v. Mercer Canyons Inc., ___ F.3d ___ (9th Cir. Aug. 31, 2016), the Ninth Circuit affirmed an order granting class certification of wage claims brought by domestic farm workers.
Among other things, the defendant argued that the common questions identified by the district court for purposes of Rule 23(a) were phantom, non-questions because they misconstrued the governing legal standard. Slip op. at 10-12. The Ninth Circuit declined the defendant's invitation to resolve these merits arguments (which the defendant had also raised in an unsuccessful, pre-certification summary judgment motion), reconfirming the rule that "we consider merits questions at the class certification stage only to the extent they are relevant to whether Rule 23 requirements have been met." Id. at 10.
Mercer’s statement is inaccurate, as even a well defined class may inevitably contain some individuals who have suffered no harm as a result of a defendant’s unlawful conduct. See Newberg on Class Actions § 2:3; Messner v. Northshore Univ. HealthSystem, 669 F.3d 802, 823 (7th Cir. 2012) (“[S]ome class members’ claims will fail on the merits if and when damages are decided, a fact generally irrelevant to the district court’s decision on class certification.”).
Mercer’s claim that the presence of certain “non-injured” individuals within the Inaccurate Information class defeats predominance is also mistaken. Empirically, Mercer contends that the class is too broad because it includes a subset of people exposed to—yet ultimately not harmed by—a policy of non-disclosure. This merely highlights the possibility that an injurious course of conduct may sometimes fail to cause injury to certain class members. However, it fails to reveal a flaw that may defeat predominance, such as the existence of large numbers of class members who were never exposed to the challenged conduct to begin with. See Mazza v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 666 F.3d 581, 596 (9th Cir. 2012); see also Berger v. Home Depot USA, Inc., 741 F.3d 1061, 1068–69 (9th Cir. 2014).
This stands in contrast to the situation in Mazza, where many class members were not injured by virtue of the fact that they “were never exposed to the allegedly misleading advertisements.” 666 F.3d at 597. In Mazza, the defendant subjected only a small segment of an expansive class of car buyers to misleading material as part of a “very limited” advertising campaign. Id. at 595. Under those circumstances, we found that Rule 23 predominance was defeated, since “it was unreasonable to assume that all class members purchasing cars had seen the potentially misleading ads.” Id. at 596. That is not the situation here, where the existence of a common policy or practice, if proven, is evidence that the class as a whole was exposed to purportedly misleading omissions about H-2A jobs.
Ruiz Torres, slip op. at 17-19 (footnote omitted; hyperlinks added). I think this analysis, and this means of distinguishing Mazza and Berger, easily can be carried over into class actions involving UCL and CLRA claims. See this post for my original discussion of Mazza, and this post for my original discussion of Berger.
The opinion goes on to discuss a number of other class certification issues, including typicality. It is worth a full read.

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