Opinion ID: 4527827
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Predominance Inquiry Here

Text: The Direct Purchasers contend that they need not prove antitrust injury at this stage, but rather it suffices if they show only that injury is capable of common proof at trial. True enough. See Hydrogen Peroxide, 552 F.3d at 311–12. But they go further and say that our case is controlled by a comment in Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, 136 S. Ct. 1036 (2016), that suggests an even lower standard for predominance whereby that criterion is satisfied unless no reasonable juror could believe the common proof at trial. In Tyson Foods, the Supreme Court was reviewing a motion to decertify a class brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq., after a jury had already rendered a verdict in favor of the plaintiff class. In considering whether representative evidence was sufficient to satisfy the predominance requirement, the Court wrote that “[t]he District Court could have denied class certification on this ground only if it concluded that no reasonable juror could have believed that the employees spent roughly equal time donning and doffing” their protective gear. Tyson Foods, 136 S. Ct. at 1049 (emphasis added). According to the Direct Purchasers, this means that so long as their evidence of class-wide antitrust injury could sustain a jury finding, they meet the predominance requirement. But contrary to the Direct Purchasers’ assertion, Tyson Foods does not control our case, and its no-reasonable-juror 12 statement certainly does not overturn our longstanding rule announced in Hydrogen Peroxide, and reiterated in many a case, that a putative class must demonstrate that its claims are capable of common proof at trial by a preponderance of the evidence. See, e.g., Modafinil, 837 F.3d at 248–49; Marcus, 687 F.3d at 591; In re K-Dur Antitrust Litig., 686 F.3d 197, 219–20 (3d Cir. 2012) (subsequent history omitted). First, Tyson Foods was discussing representative evidence in the FLSA context, a unique labor situation in which, often due to inadequate record keeping, “a representative sample [of employees] may be the only feasible way to establish liability.” Tyson Foods, 136 S. Ct. at 1040; see also Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 685–88 (1946). In those cases, the accuracy and representativeness of the sample is critical, for each class member must be able to rely on that evidence in his own trial to prove liability under the FLSA. Tyson Foods, 136 S. Ct. at 1048. Indeed, the only two Courts of Appeals to pick up on this language did so in that context. See Senne v. Kan. City Royals Baseball Corp., 934 F.3d 918, 940–41 (9th Cir. 2019) (holding in an FLSA case that the “no reasonable juror” standard applies to admissible expert testimony at the class certification stage); Monroe v. FTS USA, LLC, 860 F.3d 389, 400 (6th Cir. 2017) (suggesting in an FLSA case, albeit in dicta, that Tyson Foods’s “no reasonable juror” comment “concerned how district courts should assess the representativeness of an expert’s statistical average for class certification purposes”). Second, the Court in Tyson Foods was asked to decertify a class after the jury had rendered a verdict in favor of the plaintiff class, but, finding the jury could reasonably have relied on the representative evidence, it declined to do so. 136 S. Ct. at 1047–48. Here, by contrast, the District Court reviewed the class certification motion on a blank slate. Our non-FLSA class certification decisions that postdate Tyson Foods have reiterated that district courts are 13 required, per Hydrogen Peroxide, to resolve factual determinations by a preponderance of the evidence at the class certification stage. 3 See, e.g., Ferreras v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 946 F.3d 178, 183 (3d Cir. 2019) ; Mielo v. Steak 'n Shake Operations, Inc., 897 F.3d 467, 483–84 (3d Cir. 2018); Harnish v. Widener Univ. Sch. of Law, 833 F.3d 298, 304 (3d Cir. 2016). We hold that our standard—plaintiffs must prove their claim is capable of common proof by a predominance of the evidence—continues to apply to class certification determinations outside of the FLSA context. With that in mind, we turn to the Direct Purchasers’ claim. The injury element is at issue here. Recall that their theory of liability is that they suffered an antitrust injury because but for the reverse-settlement agreement, each would have paid less for lamotrigine than it actually did. This requires the Direct Purchasers to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they could establish, through common proof at trial, facts supporting an antitrust injury, namely: 1) GSK would have launched an AG but for the reverse-settlement; and 2) as a result, all class members would have paid less for lamotrigine in this but-for world. If each individual class member could rely on this same proof to prove the elements of its claim, then the injury is capable of common proof at trial.