Opinion ID: 386205
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Class Action Issue

Text: 11 The district court, without elaboration, refused to certify the class because plaintiffs have not established that the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impractical or that there are questions of law or fact common to the class. Record at 94. It is axiomatic that the decision to or not to certify a class is discretionary, and the determination of the trial court should stand absent an abuse of discretion, assuming that the court acts within the parameters of Fed.R.Civ.P. 23. Boggs v. Alto Trailer Sales, Inc., 511 F.2d 114 (5th Cir. 1975); Hill v. American Airlines, Inc., 479 F.2d 1057 (5th Cir. 1973); see 7A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 1785, 134-135 (1972). Denials of class certification, however, have been reversed. See, e. g., Hebert v. Monsanto Co., 576 F.2d 77 (5th Cir. 1978); Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 417 F.2d 1122 (5th Cir. 1969). Although it is difficult to glean from the district court's terse order the reasons why certification was denied here, we conclude that further reconsideration is appropriate. 12 Jim Dandy argues that the adjudicated lack of merit of Rhoades' and Lowery's individual claims is a weighty factor militating against certification. Appellees' Brief at 20-21. Some of our past decisions suggest that such an argument is not valid. See, e. g., Long v. Sapp, 502 F.2d 34 (5th Cir. 1974) (plaintiff, whose individual discrimination charges failed, was permitted to represent a class including all present and prospective black employees; the court stated that the likelihood of success on the individual claims is no more proper in the determination of membership in the class than it is in determining adequacy of representation under Rule 23(a)(4). Id. at 42); Huff v. N.D. Cass Co., 485 F.2d 710 (5th Cir. 1973) (the court stated that the standard for determining whether a plaintiff may maintain a class action is not whether he will ultimately prevail on his claim and that the court should not exclude plaintiff as a representative because he cannot succeed on the merits of his individual claim. Id. at 712. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the plaintiffs' individual claim but vacated the order dismissing the class action. Id. at 715). A recent Supreme Court decision, United States Parole Comm'r v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 100 S.Ct. 1202, 63 L.Ed.2d 479 (1980), seems to buttress this position. In Geraghty the plaintiff, a federal prisoner challenging parole release guidelines and seeking to represent all federal prisoners subject to those guidelines, was permitted to press the claims of the purported class, which had never been certified, despite both the district court's rejection of the challenge on the merits and the fact that the plaintiff had been released from prison and thus was no longer affected by the guidelines. 4 13 Furthermore, we note particularly the action taken by this court en banc in Satterwhite v. City of Greenville, 634 F.2d 231 (5th Cir. 1981), after that case had been remanded by the Supreme Court, 445 U.S. 940, 100 S.Ct. 1334, 63 L.Ed.2d 773 (1980), for further consideration in light of Geraghty and Deposit Guaranty National Bank v. Roper, 445 U.S. 326, 100 S.Ct. 1166, 63 L.Ed.2d 427 (1980). Minda Satterwhite, like Rhoades and Lowery here, sought to represent a class of those who allegedly had been denied employment by the city of Greenville because of their sex. The district court, finding that Satterwhite was not offered the job because of an apparent conflict of interest and therefore that she was not a victim of sex discrimination, denied class certification and ruled against Satterwhite on the merits. Satterwhite v. City of Greenville, 395 F.Supp. 698 (N.D.Tex.1975). 14 After a number of appellate hearings, this court en banc held that Satterwhite was not a proper class representative because she did not have claims in common, and thus lacked an adequate nexus, with the proposed class. Furthermore, we held that because (1) Satterwhite had never been a member of the putative class of discriminatees; (2) no potential member of the alleged class came forward to assert the cause; and (3) no class had been certified, the requirements of Rule 23 had not been satisfied. Consequently, we instructed the district court to dismiss the complaint. Satterwhite v. City of Greenville, 578 F.2d 987 (5th Cir. 1978). 15 The Supreme Court, without opinion, reversed and remanded our disposition of Satterwhite's claim for further consideration in light of Roper and Geraghty. Both of those opinions focus on class action issues; neither, however, addresses the adequate nexus issue. On remand, this court, again sitting en banc, sent Satterwhite back to the trial court. We instructed the court to determine, after considering further evidence as it deemed appropriate, whether there was a live controversy between the City of Greenville and at least some members of the class Satterwhite sought to represent. If it found such a controversy, the district court was then to determine whether class certification was appropriate and, if so, who should litigate the class claims. 16 The Satterwhite case is sufficiently analagous to the one here to warrant similar instructions. We emphasize, however, that Geraghty and Roper (and perhaps Satterwhite ) suggest simply that the status of the individual claims is not dispositive of the class claims. A different question, however, concerns the characteristics of the named plaintiff as representative of the class. It is well established that a class representative must be part of the class and 'possess the same interest and suffer the same injury' as the class members in order to satisfy the requirements of Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a). East Texas Motor Freight v. Rodriguez, 431 U.S. 395, 403, 97 S.Ct. 1891, 1896, 52 L.Ed.2d 453 (1976). In Rodriguez, the Supreme Court held that the named plaintiffs were not proper representatives because, inter alia, they lacked the qualifications for the positions they sought and thus could not have been injured by the alleged discriminatory employment practices. The Court dismissed the class claim and concluded: 17 We are not unaware that suits alleging racial or ethnic discrimination are often by their very nature class suits, involving classwide wrongs. Common questions of law or fact are typically present. But careful attention to the requirements of Fed.R.Civ.P. 23 remains nonetheless indispensable. The mere fact that a complaint alleges racial or ethnic discrimination does not itself ensure that the party who has brought the lawsuit will be an adequate representative of those who may have been the real victims of that discrimination. 18 Id. at 405-406, 97 S.Ct. at 1897-98. Similarly, the district court here has found, and we have affirmed, that Rhoades and Lowery were not qualified for the jobs they sought, and thus that they did not suffer from the alleged discriminatory employment practices. Although it would be inappropriate for the district court to dismiss the class complaint because the plaintiffs' individual claims have been adjudicated, the district court could dismiss the class complaint if it found that the plaintiffs lacked a sufficient nexus with the class to be one of its members. 19 The district court, however, refused to certify the class for a different reason. It found that the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the numerosity and typicality requirements of Rule 23. On remand, the court should reconsider its finding. Numerosity means number in the class but, although classes with relatively few members have been certified, see, e. g. Hebert v. Monsanto Co., 576 F.2d 77, 80 (5th Cir. 1978) (in which the court stated that it would be prepared to hold that forty members constituted a sufficiently numerous class to satisfy Rule 23 ....), courts should be cautious when relying on precedent because it involves a class of a particular size. See 7 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 1762 (1972). Nevertheless, there is evidence in the record indicating that the purported class, defined in the complaint as including all black and female applicants for employment at Jim Dandy and all those who would have applied but for Jim Dandy's allegedly discriminatory employment and recruitment practices, includes at least three hundred members. The district court did not indicate why it found that Rhoades and Lowery failed to satisfy the numerosity requirement; thus we are reluctant to find an abuse of discretion and directly overrule its order. Rather, we instruct the court to reconsider its finding. 20 Finally, the district court found that Rhoades and Lowery failed to establish that there were questions of law or fact common to the class. In Hebert v. Monsanto, 576 F.2d at 80, we examined another district court's finding of insufficient typicality in a class action discrimination context. We said: 21 Of course, although there need not be identity of claims, there must be common elements of law or fact such that the class action would be an economical way of prosecuting and defending claims .... We recognize, however, that the typicality requirement is not so rigid as to comprehend only similar fact situations .... It would be a better test for typicality to consider whether the types of facts or evidence were typical of the class .... The common goal of this evidence is the proof of the question of fact common to all of the class members, the company-wide policy to discriminate. 22 Again we are reluctant to find an abuse of discretion by the district court, because there is no indication why it found a lack of typicality. Thus, on remand, we instruct the district court to reconsider this finding as well. We emphasize that it has often been said that suits alleging racial or ethnic discrimination are often by their very nature class suits, evidencing classwide wrongs. Common questions of law or fact are typically present. East Texas Motor Freight v. Rodriguez, 431 U.S. at 405, 97 S.Ct. at 1897; see Huff v. N.D. Cass Co., 485 F.2d at 713-14. 23 The district court's order dismissing Walker's claim is thus reversed, the order dismissing Rhoades' and Lowery's individual claims is affirmed, and the class action issue is remanded for further consideration consistent with this opinion. REVERSED in part; AFFIRMED in part, and REMANDED in part.