The Authors
Full Ninth Circuit Removes Unwarranted Hurdles to Class Certification
“Nothing in Rule 23 suggests that the presence of more than a de minimis number of uninjured class members affects whether questions affecting only individual class members predominate. The Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision is a model of clear thinking and a welcome course correction in the law of class certification.”
Excerpt:
There was reason for optimism in August 2021, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted rehearing en banc of a 2-1 decision that would have made it more difficult for antitrust claimants to secure class certification. The three-judge panel in Olean Wholesale Grocery Coop., Inc. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC, 993 F.3d 774 (9th Cir. 2021) had determined that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) required a district court to find that no more than a de minimis number of class members are uninjured before a class may be certified. Having announced this de minimis rule in its opinion, the court then took the unusual step of inviting the parties to argue whether the full court should rehear the issue en banc.
As we wrote last year when en banc rehearing was granted, with its de minimis rule, “the panel really jumped the median strip.” We argued that the rule conflated the question of whether issues common to the class predominate over issues unique to individual class members with the question of how the class is defined and that the Ninth Circuit’s new and unrealistic de minimis requirement erected an unnecessary procedural hurdle to class certification. Other commentators and amici argued that requiring proof that all but a de minimis number of class members are injured requires a determination on the merits, impermissible at the class certification stage.
In welcome news for claimants and attorneys who bring antitrust class actions, the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc decided against the de minimis rule, for all of the foregoing reasons, in Olean Wholesale Grocery Coop., Inc. v. Bumble Bee Foods LLC, No. 19-56514, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 9455 (9th Cir. Apr. 8, 2022).
In a thorough review of the requirements for class certification under Rule 23, the Ninth Circuit held that the movant’s burden is to prove the prerequisites of Rule 23 by a preponderance of the evidence, bringing the Ninth Circuit in line with the law in the First, Second, Third, Fifth, and Seventh Circuits …