Opinion ID: 1927351
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Louisiana Class Action

Text: The class action of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure, Articles 591-97, is adapted from Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 as originally promulgated in 1937. Official Revision Comment (b), La.C.Civ.P. art. 591. In framing Article 591, the redactors deliberately rejected the hybrid and spurious class actions of the federal rule. The article authorizes only the true class action. Stevens v. Board of Trustees of Police Pension Fund, 309 So.2d 144 (La.1975); La.C. Civ.P. art. 591, Official Revision Comment (c). Articles 591(1) [1] and 592 [2] are pertinent to our present query. They show that, in sanctioning class actions, the legislature has imposed the following requirements: (1) a class so numerous that joinder is impracticable; (2) the joinder as parties to the suit of one or more parties who are (a) members of the class, and (b) so situated as to provide adequate representation for absent members of the class; and (3) a common character between the rights of the representatives of the class and the absent members of the class. When (as here) the first two requirements are met, the trial court's inquiry (in its determination of whether to exercise its discretion to allow or disallow the class action remedy sought) centers upon whether the character of the right sought to be enforced . . . is . . . common to all members of the class. La.C.Civ.P. art. 591(1). In Stevens, cited above, we noted that, even though the first two requirements are met, the existence of a common question of law or fact does not by itself justify a class action as involving a common character of the right to be enforced. 309 So.2d 151 (italics now supplied). We there noted that certain functional and pragmatic factors should be taken into consideration by the trial court, 309 So.2d 150-151, in aid of its ultimate determination of whether or not the class action will be clearly more useful than other available procedures for definitive determination of a common-based right, . . . in the interests of the parties (including both the class and the opponent(s) to it) and of the efficient operation of the judicial system. 309 So.2d 151. We summarized in Stevens the intertwined values of effectuating substantive law, judicial efficiency, and individual fairness involved in allowing or disallowing a class action, as follows, 309 So.2d 151: In determining how the legislature intended the courts to define and apply the concept of allowing a class action to enforce rights with a common character, we are mindful of the basic goals or aims of any procedural device: to implement the substantive law, and to implement that law in a manner which will provide maximum fairness to all parties with a minimum expenditure of judicial effort. Implicit, then, in decision that rights are of a common character is a consideration of the extent to which a clear legislative policy might be thwarted, or hampered in its implementation, by the lack of availability of the class action device. But this does not end the inquiry. Fairness to the parties demands at the least that the relationship between the claims of members of the class should be examined to determine whether it would be unfair to the members of the class, or to the party opposing the class, to permit separate adjudication of the claims. In determining whether it would be unfair to require separate adjudications, for instance, the courts should consider the precedential value of the first decision, as well as the extent of injustice that will be produced by inconsistent judgments in separate actions. Another factor to be considered, for example, is the size of the claims of the absent members of the class, for the greater the claim, the greater the interest of its owner in prosecuting it in a separate action.