Opinion ID: 2821408
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Manageability

Text: Finally, PNC argues that the District Court erred on manageability. It first says that “the same factors that defeat commonality and predominance … also make this case unmanageable as a class action.” (Opening Br. at 62.) Because we have concluded that the District Court cannot be faulted for deciding that the commonality and predominance requirements for class certification have been satisfied, this tag-along argument fails. PNC further contends that the District Court’s acknowledgement that damages issues would require 61 individualized inquiry – while dismissing as “premature” and “speculative” any consideration of solutions to address that difficulty – “is tantamount to an affirmative finding that the manageability requirement is not satisfied.” (Id.) That manageability argument fares no better than the first. As the District Court noted, “Rule 23(d) vests in the Court substantial discretion to enter orders, subsequent to the Order Certifying the Class that will follow, to manage the class.” (App. at 19.) Moreover, there are “‘imaginative solutions to problems created by the presence in a class action litigation of individual damages.’” (Id. at 19-20 (quoting Carnegie v. Household Int’l, Inc., 376 F.3d 656, 661 (7th Cir. 2004).) By refusing to settle on any particular solution at the same time that it certified the class, the District Court was not ruling that the litigation was unmanageable. That a class action may require some inquiry into facts specific to individual class members, such as damages, is not a novel observation, nor does it necessarily mean that a class action will be unmanageable. The District Court did not err by deciding that it could address this aspect of case management more fully at a later date.