Court Opinion

ID: 9819507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:26:42.829215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:30.899262
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WELCH, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. I believe the circuit court abused its discretion in certifying this class because the questions of law and fact common to the class do not predominate over any questions affecting only individual members. See 735 ILCS 5/2 — 801(2) (West 2004). This is precisely why no Illinois appellate court has ever approved class certification under circumstances similar to the case at bar. Section 2 — 801(2) of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure requires that, in order to be certified as a class action, the questions common to the class must predominate over any questions affecting only individual members. 735 ILCS 5/2 — 801(2) (West 2004). This is rarely true in mass tort personal injury actions and it is not true in the case at bar. The drafters of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3), after which our rule is patterned, knew this: “A ‘mass accident’ resulting in injuries to numerous persons is ordinarily not appropriate for a class action because of the likelihood that significant questions, not only of damages but of liability and defenses to liability, would be present, affecting the individuals in different ways. In these circumstances an action conducted nominally as a class action would degenerate in practice into multiple lawsuits separately tried.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3), Notes of Advisory Committee on Rules. In Morrissy v. Eli Lilly & Co., 76 Ill. App. 3d 753, 759 (1979), the appellate court also recognized that mass tort actions for damages do not lend themselves to class action status but belong to the type of action whose proof requirements preclude class maintenance. See also Mele v. Howmedica, Inc., 348 Ill. App. 3d 1, 22-24 (2004). In Morrissy, 76 Ill. App. 3d at 759, the appellate court distinguished between the type of class action arising out of a mass accident in which a number of people in an isolated condition sustain injuries suddenly under similar circumstances, where a class may be properly certified, from one such as the case at bar in which different kinds of injuries are alleged to have occurred under different circumstances to various class members and to continue for prolonged periods of time. The case at bar involves claims for personal injuries, emotional injuries, and property damages, some premised on an exposure to toxic chemicals, some premised on the evacuation, by claimants who were located at different distances from the derailment site, some inside homes or vehicles, some outside, some with preexisting conditions, some without. It does not involve, for example, an airplane accident where the class consists of passengers killed or injured in the accident. In the case at bar, determinations of proximate cause and the existence and extent of damages predominate over any common issues. Furthermore, some of the class members signed releases after receiving compensation from the defendant, and the validity and extent of these releases must be litigated with respect to each such class member. While, as the majority states, a single issue common to all members of the class is sufficient to justify class certification if that common issue predominates over issues affecting only individual members, in the instant case the numerous issues that affect only individual members predominate over any common issues of law or fact. Questions such as the existence of damages, the proximate cause of damages, and the extent of damages are so individualized and so predominant that they are not appropriate for class action status. In a case such as this, the common questions simply do not predominate over the individual issues the court must address to resolve the claims of each of the individual class members. In Avery v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the Illinois Supreme Court held that, in order to satisfy the commonality requirement of section 2 — 801, it must be shown that “ ‘successful adjudication of the purported class representatives’ individual claims will establish a right of recovery in other class members.’ ” Avery v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 216 Ill. 2d 100, 128 (2005), quoting Goetz v. Village of Hoffman Estates, 62 Ill. App. 3d 233, 236 (1978). In such a case, all that should remain for nonrepresentative class members is to file proofs of their claim. That is not the case here where, although questions such as the cause of the train derailment and whether the railroad breached its duty of care may be common to all the class members, the questions of proximate cause and the existence and extent of damages certainly are not. That the injuries of a class representative may have been proximately caused by the defendant does not establish that the injuries of any other class member were caused by the defendant, nor does it establish the existence or extent of other class members’ damages. Instead, minitrials must be held with respect to each class member to determine these individual issues. Indeed, it is likely that these individual issues will be the object of most of the efforts of the litigants, the court, and the jury. I recognize that, as the majority points out, class actions have been approved of in mass tort personal injury actions in jurisdictions other than ours. Nevertheless, Illinois appellate courts have never approved of class certification in such a case. I believe that if Illinois is to begin certifying class actions in mass tort personal injury actions, the Illinois Supreme Court should take the lead, not the circuit court of Perry County or this court on appeal. Accordingly, I would have reversed the decision of the circuit court of Perry County certifying this class action.