In a very disturbing opinion, the Supreme Court of Arkansas rejected General Motor’s appeal of a trial court decision to certify a class in a case involving allegedly defective parking brakes in GM vehicles. General Motors Corp. v. Bryant, et al., No. 07-437 (Ark., June 19, 2008). The case was originally brought in 2005 by named plaintiff Boyd Bryant, who alleged that a defectively designed parking brake incurred excessive wear after only 2,500 to 6,000 miles of use. GM allegedly discovered the defect in 2000 and redesigned the part, a spring clip, in 2001. The proposed class included owners of “1500 Series” pickups and utilities that were registered in the U.S. and were originally equipped with an automatic transmission and a PBR 210×30 Drum-in-Hat parking-brake system utilizing the high-force spring clip retainer. Plaintiff alleged that some 4,000,000 pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles sold by General Motors 1999-2002 were equipped with the defectively designed parking brakes. As causes of action, Bryant alleged breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, unjust enrichment, and fraudulent concealment/failure to disclose.
After a hearing, the trial court certified the class. GM appealed.
The Class Rule
Rule 23 of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure governs class actions and requires, like the federal rule, numerosity, commonality of questions of law or fact, typicality of the claims or defenses, and adequacy of representation by named parties and their counsel. A class action may be maintained if the court finds that the questions of law or fact common to the members of the class predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for the fair and efficient adjudication of the controversy.
The Appeal
General Motors asserted three main points on appeal worthy of our discussion: (1) that extensive legal variations in state laws defeated predominance; (2) that extensive factual variations in the millions of claims defeated predominance; (3) that class certification was not superior.
Choice of Law
General Motors noted that the significant variations among the fifty-one pertinent product defect laws should defeat predominance. [Most courts have accepted this notion.] The trial court had provided four reasons for its finding that the potential application of multiple states’ law did not create predominance concerns. First, the court noted that, unlike the federal rule which requires a rigorous analysis of class certification factors including the impact state law variations may have on predominance, no such rigorous analysis is required in Arkansas. Second, the potential application of many states’ laws was not germane to class certification, but was instead a task for the trial court to undertake later in the course of exercising its autonomy and substantial powers to manage the class action. Third, the trial court found that assessing choice of law was a merits-intensive determination and thus inappropriate at the certification stage. “It would be premature for the Court, at this stage in the case, to make the call on choice of law.” Fourth, if application of multiple states’ laws was eventually required, and it proved too cumbersome or problematic, the circuit court could always consider decertifying the class.
The state Supreme Court found that whether or not the class members’ vehicles contained a defectively designed parking-brake system, and whether or not General Motors concealed that defect, are predominating questions, notwithstanding the various states’ laws that may be required in determining the allegations of breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty, a violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, unjust enrichment, fraudulent concealment, damages, and restitution. The mere fact that choice of law may be involved in the case of some claimants living in different states is not sufficient in and of itself to warrant a denial of class certification. The Court viewed any potential choice of law determination and application as being similar to a determination of non-predominating individual issues, which would not defeat certification.
On the issue whether an Arkansas court must first conduct a choice of law analysis before certifying a multistate class action, the Court declined to follow the precedent of other jurisdictions, and rejected any requirement of a rigorous inquiry by the trial courts. Instead, it found that the circuit courts have broad discretion in determining whether the requirements for class certification have been met, recognizing the caveat that a class can always be decertified at a later date if necessary. Moreover, the Court believed that requiring the circuit court to conclude at this stage precisely which law should be applied could potentially stray into the merits of the action itself, which should not occur during the certification process.
The concurring opinion noted that this idea extended far past the holdings of prior case law, and potentially foreclosed analysis that could conceivably be required in some cases. A conclusion that choice-of-law issues not related to recovery or defenses will never predominate over common questions of law or fact is impermissibly overbroad.
MassTortDefense would suggest that most courts and commentators do not equate a choice of law analysis with an impermissible examination of the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims. Choice of law is a threshold question that ultimately permits a court to reach the merits of the dispute by establishing the governing legal rules. The selection of the proper law cannot fairly be termed a “merits-intensive determination” Moreover, the trial court need not make any determination about the merits of the causes of actions alleged in order to assess, based on relevant contacts, which state’s law ought to apply to those claims. Nor does the trial court even have to “make the final call” on what law will apply to each and every claim by every class member. It is sufficient for class certification for the trial court to discover that the law of many other states will likely have to be applied to many class members’ claims, and factor that into superiority and manageability of the proposed class.
Factual Variations
General Motors asserted that many factual variations preclude a finding of predominance, including issues of defect, causation, damages (was a parking brake repaired already under warranty and, if not, why not), notice of breach, class member knowledge about a potential parking-brake problem at the time of purchase, reliance, materiality, and affirmative defenses, such as comparative negligence.
The state Supreme Court found that the issue of defect was a predominating common issue. The Court viewed any need for individual inspections and/or the individual use factors merely as individual determinations relating to right to ultimate recovery or damages that pale in comparison to the purportedly common issues surrounding GM’s alleged defectively designed parking brake and alleged cover up to avoid paying warranty claims. (Of course, a proper choice of law analysis would have revealed that the issue of defect is not truly common.)
As is not uncommon, the trial court did not really address the question of how it would conduct a class trial, especially one involving legal standards from different states. But the Supreme Court stated, “We have repeatedly recognized that conducting a trial on the common issue in a representative fashion can achieve judicial efficiency.” The Court expressed general approval for the bifurcated approach to the predominance element by allowing circuit courts to divide a case into two phases: (1) certification for resolution of the preliminary, common issues; and (2) decertification for the resolution of the individual issues. Here, whether the parking-brake system installed in the class members’ vehicles was defective and whether General Motors attempted to conceal any alleged defect were “overarching issues” that could be resolved before the circuit court reaches any of the individualized questions raised by General Motors.
MassTortDefense notes that the courts rarely, if ever, focus on the manageability issues and due process concerns raised by this suggestion – devoid of analysis – that bifurcation of the trial and/or decertification following the “common” issues phase will somehow resolve all concerns. If separate juries are involved – and how can they not be with potentially millions of class members – the results of the first trial must be applied by the later juries. Fault of the defendant found in phase one must be compared with comparative fault of the plaintiff. The defect found in phase one must be shown to cause the injury and damages shown in the individual trial. False statements proven in phase one must be shown to have been relied on in the later phase. But the first trial, the common issues trial, is never tried in such a fashion (with verdict form and jury findings) that will allow that linking up to occur.
What is really happening is the transformation of class certification from a procedural tool for adjudicating large numbers of nearly identical claims into a device that aggregates disparate claims for the sole purpose of leveraging settlement. A grant of class status can put considerable pressure on the defendant to settle, even when the plaintiff’s probability of success on the merits is slight. Blair v. Equifax Check Servs., Inc., 181 F.3d 832, 834 (7th Cir. 1999); see also In re Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc., 51 F.3d 1293, 1298 (7th Cir. 1995) (companies facing millions of dollars in potential liability “may not wish to roll the dice. That is putting it mildly.”). Certifying a class without knowing whether it satisfies the requirements of Rule 23 misuses a procedural device to create settlement pressure where none should exist.
Superiority
General Motors contended that the superior method of handling a claim that particular vehicles are defective is by petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Court observed that the superiority requirement is satisfied if class certification is the more efficient way of handling the case, and it is fair to both sides. In determining whether class-action status is the superior method for adjudication of a matter, it may be necessary for the circuit court to evaluate the manageability of the class. The court assumed that opt outs and summary dispositions would shrink the class, and at the same time, that the proposed class of approximately 4,000,000 members makes it at least likely that without a class action, numerous meritorious claims might go unaddressed. [What happened to the hard and fast rule not to consider the merits?] While not the sole basis for certifying the class, the smallness of the individual claims is another factor to be considered in deciding superiority.
In any event, NHTSA twice rejected petitions dealing with the allegations made in the instant case, so resolution by that agency cannot be superior to a class action when the agency has made such a rejection, observed the Court. Moreover, the rule was not intended to weigh the superiority of a class action against possible administrative relief. The superiority requirement was intended to refer to the preferability of adjudicating claims of multiple-parties in one judicial proceeding.
MassTortDefense would suggest that the repeated references to the trial court’s ability to later decertify the class smacks of the improper, rejected, concept of conditional certification – a practice that has been soundly rejected in recent years by state and federal courts and is now prohibited under both the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure and the federal rules on which they are modeled. After considerable time and effort is expended, courts are reluctant to decertify. Here, for example, GM presented the court with a thorough analysis of conflicts of laws regarding the state-law fraud claims, breach of warranty, applicable statutes of limitations, and unjust enrichment. It seems unlikely that the trial court (after its certification was affirmed) will ever seriously revisit this issue in the context of a new predominance determination. If the court’s approach were correct, class certification would be a meaningless exercise since courts would not address the most difficult and important class certification-related questions – i.e., whether a class trial is fair or feasible – until long after certification.
MassTortDefense wonders, along with amicus the Chamber of Commerce, if Arkansas is likely become the latest “magnet” jurisdiction for the plaintiffs’ bar, imposing huge costs on companies that do business in the state and placing an unnecessary strain on Arkansas courts by forcing them to devote substantial resources to managing large-scale litigation matters that have only a minimal connection to Arkansas consumers.