Opinion ID: 2975977
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Plaintiffs-Appellees’ State Law Claims

Text: Lastly, we briefly address CenturyTel’s contention that the district court erred in certifying Plaintiffs-Appellees’ state-law claims (Counts IV and V). CenturyTel argues that the district court’s decision failed to analyze whether Plaintiffs-Appellees’ state-law claims met the Rule 23 requirements, and, alternatively, Plaintiffs-Appellees’ state-law claims are not appropriate for class certification because individual issues overwhelm any common issues. (Appellant’s Br. 44-45.) Conversely, Plaintiffs-Appellees point out that the district court’s class-certification decision “purposely did not address the state law claims.” (Appellee’s Br. 46.) A review of the district court’s decision leaves some ambiguity as to how that court intended to proceed with Plaintiffs-Appellees’ state-law claims. In an order dated May 29, 2003, the district judge presiding over the case stated that, “[a]fter further discussion with the parties, the [c]ourt finds that the parties should first focus on the merit of the plaintiffs’ federal claims and the propriety of class certification concerning those claims.” (JA 76.) Plaintiffs-Appellees urge us to construe this language as binding rather than merely hortatory: in their estimation, this language makes clear that their state-law claims were not pending before the district court in its certification decision and therefore are not currently pending before us on appeal. On the other hand, Plaintiffs-Appellees’ August 15, 2003 motion for class certification, which was filed after the May 29, 2003 order, requested certification that included the state-law claims. The district court's opinion granting class certification expressly references state-law theories and specifically lists Plaintiffs-Appellees’ state-law claims by count. The opinion also grants the motion for certification without qualification exempting the state-law claims. Moreover, the district court’s instruction to “first focus on . . . plaintiffs’ federal claims” is ambiguous. The court may have meant that it planned to deal with the certification of state-law issues in a separate proceeding at a later time, or it may have meant that, within the same proceeding, it first planned to deal with the federal-law issues and then move on to the state-law matters. Given this uncertainty and the fact that the district court’s certification analysis does not account for Plaintiffs-Appellees’ state-law claims, a remand is appropriate for the district court to apply the Rule 23 criteria to the state-law claims.