Opinion ID: 1801796
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Class Decertification Motion

Text: Following class certification, plaintiff filed an eighth and then a ninth amended complaint. The ninth amended complaint, the operative pleading here, alleged only two causes of action, for violation of the UCL and for false advertising. [5] The factual allegations in support of these claims were essentially unchanged from those alleged in the seventh amended complaint. The ninth amended complaint added three new plaintiffs, Damien Bierly, Michelle Denise Buller-Seymore, and Daniel Kagei. Following the passage of Proposition 64 in November 2004, defendants moved for class decertification. Defendants argued that the new standing requirement imposed on plaintiffs bringing a UCL action by Proposition 64that such persons must have suffered injury in fact and lost money or property as a result of the alleged UCL violationapplied to every class member. Therefore numerous individualized issues now predominate, including: (1) whether each class member was actually exposed to the allegedly false and misleading statements on which Plaintiffs' remaining UCL and [false advertising] claims are based; (2) whether, assuming such exposure, each class member was actually affected in some manner by the statement (e.g., did they believe some or all of the statement[s] to be true); and (3) whether each class member actually spent money to purchase cigarettes manufactured by any of the Defendants in this case as a result of his or her exposure to, and belief in the veracity of, the allegedly false and misleading statement, which the class member would not have spent in the absence of such alleged statement. [6] Plaintiffs responded that Proposition 64's class action compliance requirement adds nothing to the substantive analysis of whether this action has been properly certified. Neither before nor after Prop. 64 does the class action procedure impose different substantive elements on the prosecution of a claim. There is no evidence supporting defendants' argument that the voters intended to or did add additional substantive elements to the definition of what constitutes unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business practices. The trial court granted defendants' motion. Most of its ruling addressed the question whether Proposition 64 applied to pending cases and its discussion of Proposition 64's standing requirement was brief. The trial court found that the simple language of Proposition 64 required that for standing purposes, a showing of causation is required as to each class member's injury in fact . . . . [T]he injury in fact that each class member must show for standing purposes in this case would presumably consist of the cost of their cigarette purchases. But significant questions then arise undermining the purported commonality among the class members, such as whether each class member was exposed to Defendants' alleged false statements and whether each member purchased cigarettes `as a result' of the false statements. Clearly . . . individual issues predominate, making class treatment unmanageable and inefficient. Plaintiffs appealed. The Court of Appeal affirmed, agreeing with the trial court that, post Proposition 64, individual issues of exposure to the allegedly deceptive statements and reliance upon them, predominated over class issues. We granted plaintiffs' petition for review.