Source: http://www.impactlitigation.com/category/certificationrulings/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 16:42:04+00:00

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On December 7, 2017, in a published order, the Ninth Circuit rejected dismissal of an appeal of the denial of class certification by two plaintiff employees who had settled their individual claims and preserved certain class and representative claims for appeal, because the parties’ mutual settlement for consideration did not amount to “sham tactics” to manufacture an appealable final judgment under recent Supreme Court precedent. Brown v. Cinemark USA, Inc., No. 16-15377 (9th Cir. Dec. 7, 2017) (Ms. Brown and Mr. De La Rosa are represented by Capstone Law APC) (order available here). In an unpublished memorandum filed with the order, the panel reversed the denial of class certification and the dismissal of the claim under the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”), finding that the district court had erred in denying class certification based on the pleadings and had erroneously dismissed the PAGA claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies under Williams v. Superior Court, 3 Cal.5th 531 (2017), a case decided after the district court had issued its order (memorandum available here).
Plaintiffs Brown and De La Rosa were movie theater employees who brought a wage and hour class and representative action against their employer and consolidated their case with another action. The district court denied the plaintiffs’ joint motion for class certification, which, among others, sought to certify a direct wage statement claim under Labor Code section 226(a). The district court’s ruling was based solely on the pleadings, finding the wage statement claims had been pleaded derivatively rather than directly, and provided no Rule 23 class certification analysis. The court also dismissed the direct wage statement PAGA claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, finding that the PAGA notice letters had not provided sufficient information. Finally, the district court denied leave to amend the complaint and the remaining individual claims were set for trial. However, prior to trial, the parties settled all remaining individual claims for consideration, reserving the right to challenge the district court’s denial of class certification and the dismissal of Ms. Brown’s PAGA claim. Order at 4. Both plaintiffs appealed the issues reserved by the settlement. Id.
Cinemark subsequently brought a motion to dismiss the appeal in light of Microsoft Corp. v. Baker, 137 S. Ct. 1702 (2017), which was issued after the notice of appeal was filed. The Ninth Circuit denied the motion to dismiss the appeal. First, the Ninth Circuit distinguished Baker, noting that in Baker, the district court had denied class certification and the Ninth Circuit had denied discretionary interlocutory review under Rule 23(f). Order at 4. Then, “rather than pursue their individual claims on the merits, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their own claims with the express purpose of creating a final judgment for appeal.” Id. The Baker plaintiffs subsequently only appealed the district court’s interlocutory order denying class certification. The Supreme Court of the United States found that such a voluntary dismissal did not qualify as a “final decision” within the parameters of 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and was a tactic that would undermine section 1291’s firm finality principle. Id. Here, however, the Ninth Circuit found that “unlike Baker, where the plaintiffs openly intended to sidestep Rule 23(f) when they voluntarily dismissed their claims[,]” after the district court denied certification, the Brown plaintiffs continued litigating their remaining individual claims, some of which resolved in favor of the defendants and some resulted in settlement. Id. at 5. The Brown plaintiffs did not engage in any “sham tactics to achieve an appealable final judgment,” and “the parties’ mutual settlement for consideration in this case does not raise the same concerns.” Id.
Second, the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of Ms. Brown’s PAGA claim based on a failure to exhaust administrative remedies “[g]iven the import of Williams.” Memorandum at 2. The panel found that the PAGA notice letter “pleaded facts and theories sufficient to put the Defendants and the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency [LWDA] on notice for potential investigation, which satisfies the policy goal of California Labor Code section 2699.3(a).” Id. at 2-3. Quoting the California Supreme Court’s unanimous decision verbatim, the Ninth Circuit underscored that “[h]urdles that impede the effective prosecution of representative PAGA actions undermine the Legislature’s objectives.” Id. at 3. The panel further relied on the powerful dicta in Williams setting a very modest standard for PAGA notice letter sufficiency, recognizing that “[n]othing in Labor Code section 2699.3, subdivision (a)(1)(A), indicates the ‘facts and theories’ provided in support of ‘alleged’ violations must satisfy a particular threshold of weightiness, beyond the requirements of nonfrivolousness generally applicable to any civil filing.” Id.
Third, the Ninth Circuit found the district court erred in denying class certification of the direct wage statement claim on the basis of the pleadings. Memorandum at 3. Because the district court based its decision to deny certification solely on the pleadings rather than a Rule 23 analysis, the Ninth Circuit reviewed that decision de novo rather than applying the more deferential abuse of discretion normally reserved for certification rulings. It concluded that the pleadings put the defendants on sufficient notice of wage statement violations, whether direct or derivative, and further found that the plaintiffs’ pleadings merited a Rule 23 analysis for their direct wage statement claim. Id. It thus vacated the order and remanded for the district court to conduct a Rule 23 analysis.
In product labeling class actions, consumer plaintiffs must provide a damages methodology that is both admissible under Fed. R. Evid. 702 (i.e. survives a challenge under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms. Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1973)) and satisfies the requirements of Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S.Ct. 1426, 1433 (2013) (“a model purporting to serve as evidence of damages in [a] class action must measure only those damages attributable to that theory”).
In In re: Dial Complete Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation, MDL Case No. 11-md-2263-SM, 2017 DNH 051 (D.N.H. March 27, 2017) (“In re: Dial”) (slip op. available here), the court found that the plaintiffs met both aspects of this challenge. In re: Dial was a consolidated, multi-district class action brought by consumers in multiple states, including California, Florida, and Illinois, against Dial based on alleged misrepresentations of the antibacterial properties of its “Dial Complete” soap. Slip op. at 3. The court denied Dial’s motion to strike the testimony of the plaintiffs’ expert, Stefan Boedeker, and held that the expert’s damages model based on conjoint analysis methodology “satisfies the requirements of Comcast and Rule 23.” Id. at 30. However, what sets apart In re: Dial from previous cases discussing conjoint analysis is its in-depth discussion of the economic principles of the methodology.
The plaintiffs in In re: Dial alleged that the label on “Dial Complete” soap contained a number of statements that were false and misleading, including claims that the product “Kills 99.99% of Germs,” that it is “#1 Doctor Recommended,” and that Dial Complete “Kills more germs than any other liquid hand soap.” Slip op. at 3. The expert’s task was to isolate a “measurable monetary portion” of the price of the soap attributable to the falsely-claimed product features. Id. at 19. The court began by noting that the expert’s conjoint analysis methodology “consists of three steps: data collection, data analysis and damages calculation” and then described in detail how the expert-designed “Choice Based Conjoint” consumer survey worked. Id. at 6-10. Then, observing that “conjoint analysis is a well-accepted economic methodology,” the court had no problem dismissing Dial’s criticisms of the expert’s survey as “going to the weight, not the admissibility,” of the expert’s testimony. Id. at 13-17.
The court’s decision had, in certain respects, an academic depth to its analysis, explaining economic concepts like demand curves (“a visual depiction of the relationship between a product’s price and quantity demanded”) and marginal consumers (“the last consumer willing to pay for a product at a given price and, consequently, the first to leave if the price is increased”), and how those concepts and research data combined to permit an expert to perform a “calculation [that] will yield the price premium associated with the ‘Kills 99.99% of Germs’ claim.” Slip op. at 25-27. Finally, the court rejected Dial’s expert’s critique of the damages model that it is “unconnected to supply side market forces” with a cogent explanation of why a “traditional” supply and demand approach was problematic and why the plaintiffs’ expert’s model, holding the number of products actually sold constant on the supply/demand graph, actually “captured the full measure of damages suffered by consumers who actually bought the allegedly misrepresented product.” Id. at 28.
The court’s illuminating discussion of surveys, economics, and conjoint analysis should be required reading for any litigator planning to develop a damages model for class certification.
On November 21, 2016, the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District reversed the decertification of a class of over 10,000 employees. The Court of Appeal held that the trial court should examine the plaintiffs’ theory of recovery when evaluating class certification, rather than the frequency of violations resulting from that theory. Lubin v. The Wackenhut Corporation, No. B244383, __ Cal. App. 4th __ (2nd Dist. Div. 4 Nov. 21, 2016) (slip op. available here). This is welcome news for the plaintiffs’ class action bar, as it narrows the ways in which a trial court may peek at the merits of the plaintiff’s claims at the class certification stage.
The Lubin class of security officers, employed by Wackenhut, was initially certified for Labor Code claims on the basis of on-duty meal period waivers that the security officers had signed. Following certification, the parties agreed to a statistical sampling of records to determine the merits of the class claims—specifically, to determine how many class members had signed on-duty meal waivers that did not include required revocation language. Then, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling on Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), in which the high court cast doubt on the acceptability of using statistical sampling to prove liability in an employment class action. The defendant in Lubin moved for decertification based on Dukes, on the grounds that the agreed-upon sampling of meal break waivers would violate Dukes’ proscription of “trial by formula.” The trial court took further briefing in light of Brinker Rest. Corp. v. Superior Court, 53 Cal. 4th 1004 (2012), and then decertified the class. The Lubin plaintiffs appealed.
The Court of Appeal, citing Brinker, held that the answer to the “ultimate question” for class certification “hinges on ‘whether the theory of recovery advanced by the proponents of certification is, as an analytical matter, likely to prove amenable to class treatment.’” Slip op. at 8 (internal citations omitted). In pushing against the trial court’s application of Dukes, the Court of Appeal pointed to the clarification in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 136 S. Ct. 1036, 1048 (2016) (stating that Dukes does not “stand for the broad proposition that a representative sample is an impermissible means of establishing classwide liability”). Slip op. at 12. Further, the Court of Appeal criticized the trial court for examining, in its class certification analysis, the damages issue of whether employees actually experienced meal period violations. Notably, the Court of Appeal held that the trial court’s “standard requiring plaintiffs to ‘conclusively establish’ that Wackenhut had a policy that violated wage and hour laws is improper because plaintiffs’ burden at class certification is to produce substantial evidence.” Id. at 41 (emphasis in original).
With Lubin, the impact of Dukes has been reduced, and class action plaintiffs in California can now more easily certify claims based on solid theories of liability, even if the actual impact of those theories does not necessarily result in widespread damages. However, defendants may see this as a dilution of what it means to have a certified class, given that the bar has, in a sense, been lowered.

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