Court Opinion

ID: 9463978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:22:07.258964+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:23.825328
License: Public Domain

SEITZ, Chief Judge,
concurring.
The argument that the denial of class certification amounts to an injunction is that some injunctive relief which might be appropriate/! in a class action would not be appropriate in an individual suit by the named plaintiff. Thus, it is argued, the decision to refuse certification effectively limits the scope of injunctive relief which might be granted. See Hackett v. General Host Corp., 455 F.2d 618 (3d Cir. 1972). The majority’s response to this argument is, at least in part, that the decision not to certify does not foreclose the grant of class-wide injunctive relief because this decision can always be reviewed after final judgment, and the application for class certification and class-wide relief renewed in the district court. Thus, they say “[t]he question is whether the delay in review will work an injustice . . . [i]f, after judgment on the merits, the relief granted is deemed unsatisfactory, the question of class status is fully reviewable. The delay involved is the same delay that accompanies review of all interlocutory procedural rulings in a case, and the delay in no way diminishes the power of the court upon review to afford full relief.”
Thus, the majority’s analysis depends on its position that the refusal to certify is always reviewable after final judgment. While I believe that this position is correct, it deserves greater explication than the majority has given it.1
If the district court should deny Ms. Gardner the individual relief she has sought, she could, of course, raise the district court’s failure to certify along with her other assignments of error on appeal after final judgment. But the problem would be different on the eventuality that the district court grants her the individual relief she has sought. This contingency poses a question of Article III justiciability, namely, whether Ms. Gardner would have standing to appeal the district court’s refusal to certify even though she would no longer have personal relief in the balance. If Ms. Gardner would not have standing to appeal the district court’s refusal to certify after she had obtained the individual relief she has requested, the court’s refusal to *215certify could have the effect of reducing the ultimate scope of injunctive relief.
The Supreme Court’s decisions in Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 893, 95 S.Ct. 553, 42 L.Ed.2d 532 (1975) and Board of School Comm’rs v. Jacobs, 420 U.S. 128, 95 S.Ct. 848, 43 L.Ed.2d 74 (1975) provide some guidance as to whether Ms. Gardner would have standing. Sosna involved the constitutionality of Iowa’s requirement that a petitioner in a divorce action be a resident of the state for one year prior to the filing of the petition. After the district court had certified the suit as a class action but before the case reached the Supreme Court, the named plaintiff had satisfied the one year residence requirement. The Supreme Court nevertheless held that the suit was justiciable under Article III. “When the District Court certified the propriety of the class action, the class of unnamed persons described in the certification acquired a legal status separate from the interest asserted by appellant.” 419 U.S. at 399, 95 S.Ct. at 557. On the other hand, in Jacobs the Supreme Court held the case moot when the named plaintiffs had lost their personal interest in the outcome after the district court purported to certify the suit as a class action. The Court stressed that the district court had not properly certified or even identified the class, and had not adequately determined that the criteria of Rule 23 were satisfied.
The general rule which would appear to emerge from Sosna and Jacobs is that a named plaintiff must have a live personal stake in the suit at the time the class is properly certified. Thereafter, the suit may be entertained without violating Article III even though no named plaintiff has a live personal stake, as long as the class has a continuing interest. The application of this rule here would seem to indicate that the successful individual plaintiff could not appeal the refusal to grant class status after final judgment, since any decision by the district court, on remand from this court, to certify, the class would postdate the time when the named plaintiff lost her personal stake — at the time of the original judgment in her favor. But in footnote 11 of its opinion in Sosna, the Supreme Court indicated that the apparent general rule is not ironclad:
There may be cases in which the controversy involving the named plaintiffs is such that it becomes moot as to them before the district court can reasonably be expected to rule on a certification motion. In such instances, whether the certification can be said to “relate back” to the filing of the complaint may depend upon the circumstances of the particular case and especially the reality of the claim that otherwise the issue would evade review.
Footnote 11 of Sosna was relied on in Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 110 at n.11, 95 S.Ct. 854, 861, 43 L.Ed.2d 54. In Pugh, named plaintiffs had been incarcerated without a judicial determination of probable cause. The Supreme Court said that:
At the time the complaint was filed, the named respondents were members of a class of persons detained without a judicial probable cause determination, but the record does not indicate whether any of them were still in custody awaiting trial when the District Court certified the class. Such a showing ordinarily would be required to avoid mootness under Sosna. See Sosna, supra, [419 U.S.] at 402 [95 S.Ct. 553] n.ll; (citation omitted). The length of pretrial custody cannot be ascertained at the outset, and it may be ended at any time by release on recognizance, dismissal of the charges, or a guilty plea, as well as by acquittal or conviction after trial. It is by no means certain that any given individual, named as plaintiff, would be in pretrial custody long enough for a district judge to certify the class. Moreover, in this case the constant existence of a class of persons suffering the deprivation is clear. The attorney representing the named respondents is a public defender, and we can safely assume that he has other clients with a continuing live interest in the case.
1. Relation Back Under Footnote 11 of Sosna.
While footnote 11 does not purport to give an exhaustive description of the cir*216cumstances in which certification may be deemed to relate back to the filing of the complaint, it does not expressly allow relation back in circumstances other than those in which a controversy has such an inherently short cycle that a district court could not be expected to rule on a motion for certification before the named plaintiff’s personal stake has expired. But the Court’s language has not always been narrowly read.2 In Allen v. Likins, 517 F.2d 532 (8th Cir. 1975), the court indicated that relation back is permissible when the district court has unduly delayed its decision on certification. In Frost v. Weinberger, 515 F.2d 57 (2d Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 958, 96 S.Ct. 1435, 47 L.Ed.2d 364 (1976), Judge Friendly said that the “apparent force” of the general rule stated in Sosna was “largely drained” by footnote 11. In Frost, the widow and two children of a deceased who had been insured under the Social Security Act claimed that the Social Security Administration had deprived them of benefits they deserved without a full evidentiary hearing. After they filed their complaint on behalf of “all persons who now or may in the future be entitled to survivors’ benefits under the Act whose benefits have been or may be reduced without a prior hearing,” the district court ordered the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to conduct a full hearing on their claims within a month, and the Secretary did so. Subsequently, the court certified the class. The defendants claimed that the case should be dismissed as moot, because the named plaintiffs had already been given the hearing which they claimed was required by due process when the district court certified the class. In rejecting this argument, Judge Friendly said:
The reason for generally requiring that the controversy be “live” as to the named plaintiff at the time of the class action designation is that otherwise the court would have no assurance that the named plaintiff will vigorously represent the class. This has little application when, as here, the court has deferred class action determination, with the agreement of all parties, pending a ruling on the merits. The Government has pointed to no respect in which this case would have proceeded differently if the court had certified this as a class action on November 16, 1973, rather than in its decision of May 3,1974. If as Mr. Justice White said with some justification in his dissent in Sosna, 419 U.S. at 412, 95 S.Ct. at 564 (footnote omitted), “The only specific, identifiable individual with an evident continuing interest in presenting an attack upon the residency requirement is appellant’s counsel” and, if the Court had overcome this by a “legal fiction” consisting of “the reification of an abstract entity, ‘the class’, constituted of faceless, unnamed individuals who are deemed to have a live case or controversy against appellees,” it scarcely can be consequential in a case like this whether the named plaintiff had obtained a hearing in the period which, with the agreement of the parties, the court took to make its class action determination. 515 F.2d at 64.
To the extent that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Sosna relies upon legal fictions, I agree with Judge Friendly that it cannot be deemed to identify the real considerations which must guide any determination of whether a case is justiciable under Article III. While the Court’s determination that class certification brings new interests before the court does not appear to involve a legal fiction, the device of relation back clearly does, and thus it is important to identify the real considerations which motivate the use of this device.
The Supreme Court’s apparent concern is that if the named plaintiff’s stake expired before the class was certified and thus “acquired a legal status separate from the interest asserted by [named plaintiff],” there would be a hiatus in which there would be no live interests before the court. Use of the relation back device may alleviate this concern by recasting the facts so that the interests of the class are deemed to have been presented to the court at a time when the named plaintiff had a live stake.
*217But the concern that there might be an interval in which no live interests are before the court is not, in my opinion, a compelling one. In the first place, the fact of the matter is that in any case — such as Pugh —in which the device of relation back is used there will have been such an interval. It is true that footnote 11 of Sosna does not explicitly allow extension of the relation back device to cases other than those where the controversy tends to dissipate before class certification can be expected, and that the footnote states that the applicability of relation back “may depend . . . especially [upon] the reality of the claim that otherwise the issue would evade review.” But it would appear that to the extent the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” criterion would be relevant to justiciability, it would bear on the “discretionary decision whether to reach the merits of an issue, rather than [the] Art. Ill ‘case or controversy’ requirement.” Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U.S. 747, 781, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 1272, 47 L.Ed.2d 444 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
In some circumstances, the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” criterion is relevant to whether Article III has been satisfied. In Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U.S. 147, 149, 96 S.Ct. 347, 349, 46 L.Ed.2d 350 (1975), the Court said:
Sosna decided that in the absence of a class action, the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” doctrine was limited to the situation where two elements combined: (1) the challenged action was in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or expiration, and (2) there was a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party would be subjected to the same action again. The instant case, not a class action, clearly does not satisfy the latter element.
In the context of Bradford, the fact that the same complaining party might reasonably be expected to be subjected to the same action again is undoubtedly relevant to whether Article III is satisfied. If an individual plaintiff can show that there is “a reasonable expectation that [he will] be subjected to the same action again,” he can show that he continues to have a personal interest in the outcome of the case, despite apparent mootness. On the other hand, if he cannot show that the question is “capable of repetition” as to himself, he will fail to show that he continues to have a personal interest in the outcome of the case. Thus, my reading of Bradford indicates that the doctrine of “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” when it bears upon Article III, is a way of demonstrating that the constitutional requirement of “case or controversy” is really met, despite apparent mootness. The doctrine does not function to provide an exception to the constitutional requirement. In fact, it would seem improper to make an exception to the requirements set forth in the broad language of Article III 3
On the other hand, there are circumstances in which the doctrine of “capable of repetition, yet evading review” goes to the “discretionary decision to reach the merits of an issue, rather than [the] Art. Ill ‘case or controversy’ requirement.” In Sosna, the Supreme Court mentioned that one factor weighing in favor of justiciability was that Iowa’s one year residence requirement for filing a divorce was so short that it tended to evade review. But in Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., supra, the Court said: “nothing in our Sosna or [Jacobs ] opinions holds or even intimates that the fact that the named plaintiff no longer has a personal stake in the outcome of a certified class action renders the class action moot unless there remains an issue ‘capable of repetition, yet evading review.’ ” (citation omitted) 424 U.S. at 754, 96 S.Ct. at 1259. Rather, the Court felt that the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” criterion went to the discretionary component of justiciability, and that Article III was satisfied solely because the interests of the class were before the court.
*218With respect to relation back, it would seem that the doctrine of “capable of repetition, yet evading review” would only be relevant to any constitutional requirement that there always be live interests before the court if the doctrine is a way of demonstrating that such a constitutional requirement is in fact satisfied even where it might not appear to be. If the doctrine does not serve as a way of showing that there continue to be live interests before the court, then it goes to the discretionary component of justiciability, and the fact that the Supreme Court mentioned the doctrine in footnote 11 of Sosna does not imply that there is any constitutional requirement that there be live interests before the court at every moment of a lawsuit.
The fact that a case presents an issue which may well become moot as to the named plaintiff before class certification can be expected does not imply that during the interval between mootness with respect to the named plaintiff and class certification there continue to be live interests before the court.4 Thus, the fact that footnote 11 of Sosna mentions the question of whether a controversy tends to dissipate before class certification does not imply that there is a constitutional requirement that there be live interests before the court at every moment of a lawsuit. In fact, since footnote 11 allows relation back and since the evading review consideration does not speak to Article III, it would seem that footnote 11 implies that there is no constitutional requirement that there be live interests before the court at every moment of a lawsuit.
I find any argument that there should be such a requirement unconvincing. There is no reason why holding a case in abeyance until live interests come before the court should mean that the case will not go forward with the necessary concreteness and adverseness. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 99, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1908). I would view any contention that a court must at all times have a live plaintiff before it and cannot consider adding new interests to repair any deficiency as barren of reality. This is not to say that the class may be certified at any time, but merely that Article III does not divest courts of all discretion to consider adding new parties— even after final judgment — after it appears that former parties have lost their personal stake.5
Moreover, as to the discretionary component of justiciability, I believe that this court should entertain an appeal from the district court’s refusal to certify the class by a named plaintiff who has received all the individual relief she has requested, at least when the named plaintiff made a timely motion for class certification in the original proceedings. The contrary position would insulate from appellate review a decision of far reaching consequences,6 and might frustrate the interests of judicial economy since it would encourage a multiplicity of lawsuits in conditions where a class action would be the preferable mode of adjudication.
In sum, I conclude that footnote 11 in Sosna should be given an expansive reading, so that Ms. Gardner, even if she obtains all the individual relief she has requested, would have standing to seek reversal of the district court’s decision not to certify.
*2192. The Named Plaintiffs Continuing Interest.
The relation back device found in footnote 11 of Sosna rests on the theory that upon certification, the interests of the class are before the court. But even apart from my conclusion that footnote 11 poses no barrier to, and impliedly permits certification after the named plaintiff’s claim is already moot, I believe that the successful named plaintiff could complain of the district court’s failure to certify the class because he has the continued personal interest of exercising his fiduciary responsibilities with respect to the members of the class he has sought to represent.
The Supreme Court has apparently never expressed, or been asked to express, any view on the theory that the putative named plaintiff of a class action has a personal interest which stems from the fact that he is a fiduciary with respect to the members of the class. But there are several indicia of the fact that filing an action with a request for class treatment imposes a fiduciary responsibility upon the putative named plaintiff: 1) even before class certification, the action may not be settled or dismissed without court approval,7 Kahan v. Rosenstiel, 424 F.2d 161 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 398 U.S. 950, 90 S.Ct. 1870, 26 L.Ed.2d 290 (1970), 2) F.R.Civ.P. 23(a)(4) requires as a prerequisite for certification that “the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class”, 3) F.R.Civ.P. 23(d)(2) gives the court power to issue orders “requiring, for the protection of the members of the class or otherwise for the fair conduct of the action, that notice be given in such manner as the court may direct to some or all of the members of any step in the action, or of the proposed extent of the judgment, or of the opportunity of members to signify whether they consider the representation fair and adequate, to intervene and present claims or defenses, or otherwise to come into the action,” see Knuth v. Erie-Crawford Dairy Co-op. Assoc., 395 F.2d 420 (3d Cir. 1968). The fiduciary responsibility of representative parties also, in my view, explains why class representatives may ever raise matters bearing on the interests of class members even though they have no tangible personal interest in these matters — including the very question of class certification.
I conclude that whether on the relation back theory found in footnote ,11 of Sosna, or on the theory that Ms. Gardner has a continuing personal stake stemming from the fact that she is a fiduciary on behalf of the putative class, she would be able to appeal the district court’s refusal to certify after final judgment even though she receives all the individual relief which she has requested. Since the district court’s refusal to certify will always be appealable after final judgment, it can hardly be said that the court’s decision has foreclosed the possibility that the class could ultimately be certified and class-wide relief granted. Thus, the court’s refusal does not amount to an injunction for purposes of § 1292(a)(1), and the present interlocutory appeal must be dismissed.

. Portions of the majority’s opinion indicate that, apart from the argument that the certification decision is reviewable after final judgment, the refusal to certify cannot be deemed to constitute the denial of an injunction because this refusal does not directly deny injunctive relief. In view of my conclusion that the certification decision is appealable after final judgment, I need not reach this alternative possible ground of decision. But I note that any argument that an order must directly grant or refuse injunctive relief to be appealable under § 1292(a)(1) is not readily reconcilable with General Electric Co. v. Marvel Rare Metals Corp., 287 U.S. 430, 53 S.Ct. 202, 77 L.Ed. 408 (1932), where the Supreme Court sustained the appealability of an order which dismissed a counterclaim for improper venue.
I also note that Ms. Gardner’s complaint on behalf of herself and the class does not request temporary injunctive relief. I need not decide whether the disposition of this case should be different if she had. See Stewart-Warner Corp. v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 325 F.2d 822, 829-30 (Friendly, J., dissenting) (2d Cir. 1963).

. But cf. Napier v. Gertrude, 542 F.2d 825 (10th Cir. 1976).

. In United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 179-80, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 2947, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974), the Court indicated that standing is not conferred by virtue of the fact that “if respondent is not permitted to litigate this issue, no one can do so.”

. In Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. at 110-11 n.11, 95 S.Ct. 854, the Court appeared to look to whether the issue was capable of repetition as to the class members, not as to the named plaintiffs.

. I agree with Napier v. Gertrude, supra n.2, that the fact that the Supreme Court in Jacobs did not remand for proper application of F.R. Civ.P. 23 does not weigh against my position, since “[t]he Court did not rule . . . that mootness removed its power to remand, and it does not appear that the failure to certify the class action was assigned as error . . . ” 542 F.2d 825, 827.

. Even if we should hold that district’s refusal to certify in this case may be brought up on an interlocutory appeal because it cannot be reviewed after final judgment, there would still be cases which could not be appealed under § 1292(a)(1) because the complaint does not seek injunctive relief. See Hackett v. General Host Corp., 455 F.2d 618 (3d Cir. 1972).

. In determining that Article III does not always require that a named plaintiffs personal stake continue throughout the litigation, Sosna, 419 U.S. 393, 399, 95 S.Ct. 553, 557, 42 L.Ed.2d 532 at n.8 mentioned that “Once the suit is certified as a class action, it may not be settled or dismissed without the approval of the court.”