The Seventh Circuit reaffirmed class certification yesterday in a case involving front loading washers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s remand of the matter in light of Comcast Corp. v. Behrend. See Butler v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., No. 11-8029 (7th Cir. 8/22/13).

Readers will recall that earlier this year, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Butler v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 702 F.3d 359 (7th Cir. 2012) for further consideration in light of Comcast  Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1426 (2013). The Seventh Circuit had certified two class actions of washer consumers despite multiple significant differences among class members, including admitted variations in laundry habits; differences in remedial efforts; variation in service performed on the machines. And despite the fact that a reported 97% of the class had never complained of a problem or suffered the alleged defect..

On remand, the court of appeals affirmed its earlier ruling that the predominance requirement was satisfied; the court reasoned it supposedly “would drive a stake through the heart of the class action device, in cases in which damages were sought rather than an injunction or a declaratory judgment, to require that every member of the class have identical damages.”  If the issues of liability are genuinely common issues, and the damages of individual class members can be readily determined in individual hearings, in settlement negotiations, or by creation of subclasses, the fact that damages are not identical across all class members should not preclude class certification, the court concluded.

The Seventh Circuit in essence found that Rule 23(c)(4) permits a class action limited to determining liability on a class-wide basis, with separate hearings to determine the damages of individual class members or groups of class members.

Of course, the Supreme Court did not require that all class members’ damages be identical — a straw man from the court of appeals — but clearly disapproved of the traditional approach that damages were not part of the predominance requirement.  And the court of appeals’ explicit reference to settlement as an equally valid and available mechanism for resolving individual damages issues fundamentally illustrates the error of its opinion.  A class action cannot be certified under Rule 23, under the Rules Enabling Act, or basic notions of due process, on the basis that settlement may resolve predominating individual issues.  That is the essence of blackmail class action settlements. A class has to be certified on the premise that it will not settle, that it will go trial, and that handling all of the individual issues can properly and efficiently take place in a trial.  The Seventh Circuit’s approach to the Rule 23(c)(4) issue certification is also a dangerous “end-run” around Rule 23(b)(3) and the predominance requirement. Nor can this approach be reconciled with Comcast or Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011).

This case, along with Glazer v. Whirlpool Corp., 2013 WL 3746205 (6th Cir. July 18, 2013), are likely headed back to the Supreme Court.  In the meantime, defendants will need to focus the courts on issues of manageability and trial plan, and make clear they intend to try each and every mini-trial, exercising their full due process rights, if the courts actually certify these types of cases.