The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to review an important class action issue: the use of “trial by formula” as a vehicle to overcome the un-manageability and predominance of individual issues in a proposed class action. Braun et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. et al., No. 551 EAL 201 (Pa. 7/2/12).

The case involves the appeal of an award for Wal-Mart employees who allegedly worked off the clock by skipping rest and meal breaks.

The state Supreme Court indicated it would review: Whether, in a purported class action tried to verdict, it violates Pennsylvania law (including the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure) to subject Wal-Mart to a “Trial by Formula” that relieves Plaintiffs of their burden to produce class-wide “common” evidence on key elements of their claims.

There is a huge difference between deciding that aspects of an adequate representative’s claim are typical of other class members’, and extrapolating from representative’s claims to the class as a whole on issues that are admittedly not common.  We noted for readers before that this procedural short cut, which can deny defendants due process and a right to adjudicate and defend against each claim, was criticized in the federal class context in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The U.S. Supreme Court was clear: “We disapprove that novel project.” Because the Rules Enabling Act forbids interpreting federal Rule 23 to abridge,enlarge or modify any substantive right, a class cannot be certified on the premise that the defendant will not be entitled to litigate its defenses to individual claims.

The same issue applies to the trial plans proposed by many mass tort plaintiffs, which try to use the class rule to prevent defendants from ever having an opportunity to litigate individual defenses as to individual class members. Now we may start to see if plaintiffs can evade this by proceeding at a state class level in cases not removable under CAFA.