Opinion ID: 78353
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Class Certification Decision

Text: After discovery commenced, the employees moved to certify the following class of lawful employees of Mohawk in North Georgia: All persons legally authorized to be employed in the United States who are or have been employed in hourly positions by Mohawk Industries, Inc., its subsidiaries or affiliates in Georgia at any time from January 5, 1999 to the present, other than Excluded Employees. Excluded Employees are employees whose employment at Mohawk has been limited to: Dal-Tile, Unilin, or any Mohawk facility or facilities in Milledgeville, Dublin, Tifton, Norcross, Kennesaw or Atlanta, Georgia. The employees sought certification of one of their claims under Georgia law, Ga. Code. Ann. § 16-14-4(a), for injunctive relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2), and sought certification of all of their claims under Rule 23(b)(3). The employees alleged several common questions when they sought certification, including whether Mohawk conducted or participated, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of an enterprise's affairs, whether Mohawk engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity, and whether Mohawk engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity.... [or] a conspiracy to violate § 16-14-4(a) of the Georgia RICO statute. Mohawk argued that its hiring and wage-setting practices were decentralized and differed significantly over time, that there was no evidence of a single enterprise or conspiracy, and that proof of injury was not possible. The employees responded that Mohawk's decentralization mantra was irrelevant to the commonality analysis because the employees had alleged common questions for which they would present common proof. The employees also argued that the claims of the named plaintiffs were typical: The Named Plaintiffs' claims and the claims of the class members arise out of the same `course of conduct' (the operation and management of an enterprise through which Mohawk hires and harbors illegal workers) and `the same legal theory' (that this unlawful conduct depresses wages). Mohawk responded that the claims of plaintiffs Jones and Pelfrey were not typical because Jones never worked at a Mohawk location that used temporary labor and Pelfrey was a former employee. The employees responded that Jones's claim was typical because her allegation, like the allegation of the class, was that the illegal hiring by Mohawk depressed all the wages of legal employees, regardless of location. The employees also argued that the scheme by Mohawk to hire and harbor illegal workers satisfied the requirement that a defendant has acted ... on grounds that apply generally to the class, Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(b)(2). Mohawk argued against certification under subsection (b)(2) on the ground that the damages sought by the employees were not incidental to their claim for equitable relief. The employees responded that they were seeking certification of a hybrid class for only injunctive relief under subsections (b)(2) and (c)(4), and that class would be separate from the class for which they were seeking monetary damages under subsection (b)(3). The employees argued that the common issues whether Mohawk conducted the affairs of an enterprise, engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity, and participated in a conspiracy, and whether and to what extent the class suffered injury predominated because those issues would have to be resolved in every class member's individual action. Mohawk argued that hiring and wage-setting differed across the class, there was no evidence of a single enterprise or conspiracy, there was no common method of proving injury or damages, and defenses based on statutes of limitation would require individual determinations. The employees responded that any hiring and wage discretion did not negate the existence of common questions, arguments about the existence of an enterprise and damages were premature arguments about the merits of their complaint, and the employees sought only damages incurred during the limitations period. The district court denied class certification. The district court determined that the employees satisfied the requirements of numerosity, Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a)(1), and adequacy of representation, id. (a)(4), but that the employees did not satisfy the requirements of commonality, id. (a)(2), and typicality, id. (a)(3). The district court agreed with Mohawk that the employees had not satisfied the commonality requirement because [c]ontrary to Plaintiffs' arguments that Defendant engaged in one grand conspiracy to employ illegal workers, the evidence in the record indicates that Defendant's operations, including its use of temporary employment agencies and wage-setting practices, are extremely decentralized. The district court also agreed with Mohawk that neither of the proposed class representatives presented claims typical of the class because Jones never worked at a Mohawk facility that used temporary labor and because both Jones and Pelfrey worked at only a handful of [Mohawk's] facilities. The district court agreed with Mohawk that a class could not be certified under subsection (b)(2). The district court concluded that the employees' demand for monetary damages was not incidental to their demand for injunctive relief. The district court also declined to certify a hybrid class for both monetary and injunctive relief on the ground that having one jury resolve all of the many individual and case-specific issues relating to Plaintiff's claims before the Court issued a ruling as to equitable remedies would be overly cumbersome, confusing, and highly inefficient. The district court refused to certify a class under Rule 23(b)(3) on the grounds that common issues did not predominate and the class action would not be superior to other available methods of relief. The district court again relied on the corporate structure of Mohawk when it determined that class litigation would present an unmanageable number of individual legal and factual issues because the evidence in the record fails to support a determination that Defendant engaged in a relationship with the various temporary employment agencies at a corporate-wide level. The district court determined that the first three factors in the superiority analysis weighed in favor of the employees, but the district court determined that the manageability factor tips the scales in favor of concluding that Plaintiffs have failed to satisfy the superiority requirement .... [because] [a]s previously noted, resolution of the issues involved in this case will, by necessity, break down into an unmanageable number of individual legal and factual issues. The district court did not evaluate the employees' expert testimony. The district court concluded that arguments by Mohawk attacking the experts were essentially... [evidentiary] challenges or challenges to the merits of the opinions offered by Plaintiffs' experts. The district court determined that the expert evidence presented by Plaintiffs is sufficiently probative to be useful to the Court in determining whether Plaintiffs have satisfied the requirements for class certification.