Opinion ID: 1927351
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Variations in Individual Recovery Mass Tort

Text: Our trial brother disallowed the class action principally because the damages to each member of the class might vary considerably. As noted, this circumstance alone does not defeat the class action, see Stevens at 309 So.2d 149. However, the variation in possible individual awards is properly taken into consideration in the determination of whether or not to allow a class action. In the first place, great differences of individual issues and evidence involve the possibility of fragmentation of the class action in effect into multiple lawsuits, to the prejudice of its manageability and the judicial efficiency contemplated by this procedural device. In the second place, where separate large individual claims are possible, the greater is the interest of the individual owners of the claim to prosecute a separate rather than a class action, and the lesser is the need for a class action to assure legal representation in the enforcement of substantive claims. For the reasons earlier noted at more length, neither of these considerations justify the denial of a class action in the present case. It is true that, because of these considerations, the federal advisory committee felt that A `mass accident' resulting in injuries to numerous persons is ordinarily not appropriate for a class action (italics ours), in recommending the 1966 revision of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. 3 Moore's Federal Practice, Section 23.01 [10.3]. [5] Even for federal class actions, the observations of the advisory committee have been criticized as functionally unsound, [6] while in mass food poisoning cases arising from a single incident the federal courts have found the class action to be an appropriate procedural vehicle by which to determine liability for and allocation of damages to individual members of the class affected. [7] In the present circumstances, the non-availability of a Louisiana class action is thus not suggested by whatever are the pragmatic or federal-jurisdictional reasons which suggest that a federal class action is ordinarily inappropriate to determine liability and damages arising from a mass accident. To the contrary, for the reasons previously noted, the present class action seems to be the most appropriate procedural vehicle to determine these numerous minor claims arising from a single incident.