Opinion ID: 1188724
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Direct Evidence

Text: The appellants did not argue to the district court that their direct evidence was alone sufficient to support a finding of commonality or typicality for class certification under Rule 23. They presented direct evidence to bolster their statistical evidence, not as standalone proof for Rule 23(a) purposes. However, the appellants' choice of methodology is not the dispositive issue on appeal. What the standard of review should examine in this case is whether the district court, based on the direct evidence alone, could have reasonably found that evidence insufficient to meet the appellants' burden of proof on typicality and commonality for the proposed class. That a reasonable jurist could have also found the same evidence sufficient for certification is irrelevant to the abuse of discretion standard where the evidence also could support the opposite finding. It appears plain, on this record, that a reasonable jurist could have found, as the district court did, that the appellants' direct evidence (though considered as only supple mental evidence) was simply inadequate to meet their burden of proof. Under Rule 23(a)(2) and (3), the appellants were required to prove there were questions of law or fact common to the class and claims . . . of the representative parties are typical . . . of the class. FED.R.CIV.P. 23. The purported class, all former and current African-American employees of the Nucor plant during the relevant time period, worked in all the plant's departments, which include at least the beam mill, hot mill, melt shop, cold mill and shipping departments. Thus, the appellants' claims must have common questions among the employees in all these departments and be typical of those claims. The appellants' direct evidence, however, could reasonably be determined as failing to meet the burden of proof for either commonality or typicality for the purported class. The statements of the three affiants cited by the majority do claim race-based denials of promotions, the employment practice at issue in their disparate treatment and disparate impact claims. However, all three were employees only in the beam mill. While some of the appellants' declarations allege employment discrimination in other departments as to them as beam mill employees, they fail to do so as to non-beam mill employees. The district court noted that of all the appellants' direct evidence, only two non-beam mill employees allege discrimination in another department. Even the statement alleging bias of a supervisor was a statement by the department manager in charge of the beam mill about employees in the beam mill. [T]he existence of a valid individual claim does not necessarily warrant the conclusion that the individual plaintiff may successfully maintain a class action. It is equally clear that a class plaintiff's attempt to prove the existence of a companywide policy, or even a consistent practice within a given department, may fail even though discrimination against one or two individuals has been proved. Cooper v. Fed. Reserve Bank of Richmond, 467 U.S. 867, 877-78, 104 S.Ct. 2794, 81 L.Ed.2d 718 (1984) (characterizing the holding in Falcon ); see also Int'l Bd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 336, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977) (to prove a pattern or practice violation a plaintiff must prove more than the mere occurrence of isolated or `accidental' or sporadic discriminatory acts but must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that racial discrimination was the company's standard operating procedure the regular rather than the unusual practice). On this record, a reasonable jurist could conclude the appellants failed to meet their burden of proof to show common issues and typical claims between themselves, as employees in the beam mill seeking promotions, and the workers in all the other departments who sought promotions. The appellants simply failed to produce that evidence. The effect of this failure of proof, for certification purposes, is that the appellants failed to prove commonality or typicality for the non-beam mill employees they seek to represent. In that circumstance, a reasonable jurist, like the learned district court judge in this case, could find the appellants failed to show commonality or typicality for certification of a class consisting of all African-American plant employees. Accordingly, the district court acted within its discretion to deny class certification on the basis of the appellants' direct evidence. [3]