Opinion ID: 2975977
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Superiority Requirement

Text: The district court also addressed the superiority requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). The court noted that the amount of a single class member’s potential recovery was small, making class resolution superior to other methods of adjudicating the controversy. Beattie, 234 F.R.D. at 171. In concluding that the Plaintiffs-Appellees satisfied the requirements of Rule 23(b)(3), the district court explained that “the potential recovery by an individual is relatively small, the liability issue predominates, the issues of management can be addressed by various procedural mechanisms and careful definition of subclasses, and the likelihood of an individual class member preferring to take control of the litigation is remote.” Id. One factor to consider in determining whether the superiority requirement of Rule 23(b)(3) is satisfied are “the difficulties likely to be encountered in the management of a class action.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3). In Windsor, the Supreme Court explained that litigation should be brought as a class action if individual suits would yield small recoveries. The Court stated that “‘[t]he policy at the very core of the class action mechanism is to overcome the problem that small recoveries do not provide the incentive for any individual to bring a solo action prosecuting his or her rights.’” 521 U.S. at 617 (quoting Mace v. Van Ru Credit Corp., 109 F.3d 338, 344 (7th Cir. 1997)). Here, individual suits would yield only a small amount of damages, because the most each class member would have paid for WireWatch between 1994 and 2001 is roughly $124.68.1 Such a small possible recovery would not encourage individuals to bring suit, thereby making a class 1 This amount was calculated based on Plaintiffs-Appellees’ allegation that CenturyTel charged $0.50 per month for WireWatch in 1994, $0.99 per month between 1995 and 2000, and $3.95 per month in 2001. (JA 19; Compl. ¶ 23.) Assuming that a customer was billed twelve times a year, WireWatch fees would have been approximately $6 for 1994, $11.88 each year between 1995 and 2000, and $47.40 in 2001. No. 06-1565 Beattie, et al. v. CenturyTel, Inc. Page 11 action a superior mechanism for adjudicating this dispute. See id. (“‘A class action solves this problem by aggregating the relatively paltry potential recoveries into something worth someone’s (usually an attorney’s) labor.’”) (quoting Mace, 109 F.3d at 344); see also Carroll v. United Compucred Collections, Inc., 399 F.3d 620, 625 (6th Cir. 2005) (same). Thus, the district court did not err in holding that the superiority requirement of Rule 23(b)(3) is satisfied.