Court Opinion

ID: 9473250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:24:09.530552+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:24.755721
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority finds the efforts of defendants to notify petitioners about the settlement reasonable under the circumstances. I do not agree, and I respectfully dissent.
The district court, anticipating that many potential class members would by the time of the settlement no longer reside at the stale addresses provided by the defendants, originally ordered both sides in this class action to identify any later known address for each prospective class member who failed to receive notice through an initial mailing, The court further ordered the defendants alone to mail a second series of notices to the current addresses of prospective class members uncovered through the joint effort at identification. But, even though the postal service returned more than 70 per cent of the notices as undeliverable, the defendants neither updated the addresses nor sent out a second mailing. The majority nevertheless concludes that the defendants complied with the district court order, entered under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and with the constitutional requirements of due process. I cannot agree.
Defendants do not dispute that they did nothing to locate and notify potential class members who failed to receive the original notices. The relatively unproductive and inefficient search of Chieago-area telephone directories by counsel for the class action representatives does not, in my mind, satisfy defendants’ obligations under the order. The record fails to disclose any planned effort reasonably calculated to locate current addresses for the unnotified potential class members. Even assuming that defendants can gain vindication from the efforts of their adversaries, the search of directories produced meager results and, standing alone, was inadequate under the circumstances.
The majority dismisses defendants’ failure to send a second mailing as inconsequential since the 37 potential class members who were identified received individual notice by telephone. Defendants, however, had a duty not only to notify potential class members whose current addresses were found, but also to expend a reasonable effort attempting to identify class members and their current addresses. Defendants cannot insulate themselves from the obligations of the court order to make a *157second mailing by ignoring the duty to identify and then arguing that no second mailing is required.
Defendants also failed to comply with the requirements of due process. Where, as here, “notice is a person’s due, process which is a mere gesture is not due process. The means employed must be such as one desirous of actually informing the absentee might reasonably adopt to accomplish it.” Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 315, 70 S.Ct. 652, 657, 94 L.Ed. 865 (1950). While defendants did not have to exhaust every conceivable method of identification, they were required, within the limits of practicability, to send such notice as was reasonably calculated to reach most interested parties. Mullane at 318, 70 S.Ct. at 659. Notice by publication and individual notice sent to ten-year-old addresses simply fails to satisfy this standard. The search of directories, while certainly a step in the right direction, identified only 37 out of more than 500 unnotified potential class members and should have been supplemented with other searches. Petitioners suggest one possibly fertile source of current addresses — Illinois state drivers' licenses. I do not know how many missing addresses this source would have turned up, but it exemplifies the availability of relatively effective and cheap search strategies overlooked by the defendants.
Because of defendants’ failure to make a reasonable effort to notify prospective class members, I would permit the petitioners to file their late claims.