Opinion ID: 403892
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Class Action Denial

Text: 7 Louis Pinkard and Edward Lofton filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e on February 17, 1976, prior to receipt of right-to-sue letters from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Plaintiffs moved to add Richard Holston as a party plaintiff shortly after February 19, 1976, when Holston was notified by the EEOC of his right to sue. Like Pinkard and Lofton, Holston alleged in his EEOC complaint that Pullman discriminatorily discharged him because of his race. On July 28, 1976, Pinkard and Lofton moved to add Donnie Sealie as a party plaintiff, and the court granted the motion on August 11, 1976. Sealie had originally filed an employment discrimination charge against Pullman-Standard on May 6, 1975, alleging that he had been discharged because of his race. The Birmingham District Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued Sealie a right-to-sue letter on June 15, 1976. On August 18, 1978, prior to the pretrial hearing in the case, the EEOC issued Pinkard and Lofton notice of their right to sue the company. 2 8 On October 12, 1978, plaintiffs proceeded with a Fed.R.Civ.P. 23 class certification hearing in district court. Plaintiffs sought to certify a class of all black employees of defendant company who were discharged ... within 180 days prior to the earliest filing with the EEOC of a charge of discrimination by any of the four named plaintiffs. The court refused to certify the class on the ground that the plaintiffs failed to carry their burden of proving typicality of claims, as required under Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(a)(3). 3 9 It is well settled that, where a case requires detailed investigations of the circumstances surrounding the claims of individual class members, that case does not lend itself to treatment as a class action. Reddix v. Lucky, 252 F.2d 930 (5th Cir. 1958). Similarly, this court recently refused to reverse a district court which had denied class certification in Crawford v. Western Electric Co., Inc., 614 F.2d 1300 (5th Cir. 1980), stating that: 10 The fact that plaintiffs are members of the same race as other employees and rejected job applicants whom they seek to represent in a class action is not enough in itself to require a finding under Rule 23 that their representation was adequate or that their claims were typical of the class. 11 Id. at 1304. 12 In the instant case the four named plaintiffs bring forward claims which are factually distinct. Consequently, we affirm the district court's finding that plaintiffs failed to meet the procedural requirements justifying class certification. The district court properly distinguished the Fifth Circuit decision, Hebert v. Monsanto Company, Texas City, Texas, 576 F.2d 77 (5th Cir. 1978), that plaintiffs cited as contrary to the Reddix typicality test. Although this court in Hebert reasoned that, (i)f class actions were limited to factual typicality, class actions under Title VII would be impossible because, except in rare cases, the facts would not be identical, the court's decision to certify that class was based additionally upon the fact that plaintiffs had produced substantial statistical evidence of company-wide discriminatory policies. The trial court properly focused upon this distinction, concluding that the (Hebert ) decision is clearly hung on the breadth of the defendant's policies involved there and the wide scope of the statistical evidence ... pertinent to show these policies. Record Excerpts, at 13. Consequently, we agree that Hebert does not provide a sufficient justification upon which to confer typicality in the face of the significant factual dissimilarities of plaintiffs' claims. Accordingly, we affirm the denial of class certification.