Court Opinion

ID: 9743576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:37:04.48899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:42.195692
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE FREEMAN concurring in part and dissenting in part: I concur in all but part III-D of the majority’s opinion. I do not agree with the majority’s assumptions with respect to the methodology which Edison would have to employ in order to make refunds to historical customers. Specifically, I do not agree that ordering Edison to issue refunds to the customers who actually paid the excessive rates at issue rather than current customers would necessarily require it to process hundreds of millions of customer records or to mail millions of refund checks without knowing whether those checks would even reach such individual customers. Rather, I believe that Edison could properly be ordered to issue refunds to historical customers and, at the same time, be allowed to make refunds only to such customers who respond to notice by publication of their right to a refund. In the analogous case of class actions, it is well established that, as a matter of due process, individual notice to every class member is not required in all circumstances. (Frank v. Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association of America (1978), 71 Ill. 2d 583, 594.) Rather, the question of notice depends upon the circumstances of the individual action. Miner v. Gillette Co. (1981), 87 Ill. 2d 7, 15. Inasmuch as individual notice is not a per se requirement in class action litigation, I see no reason why the composition of the “refund class” in this case must turn on an all-or-none determination. That is, why must the refund class consist of all historical customers or none at all? There is no legal reason why that must be the case. As such, I find it eminently more reasonable and equitable that the “refund class” consist of as many historical customers as could be notified, through reasonable means and efforts. Notice by publication in at least one of the major newspapers in the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the country, for instance, should be fairly inexpensive. Moreover, to the extent that historical customers would respond to such notice and claim refunds, a windfall to current customers would be avoided. I believe that notice by publication is a reasonable compromise of the all-or-none proposition which the majority assumes applies in this case. Therefore, I respectfully dissent from part III-D of the majority opinion.