This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the taut Cold War thriller “Fail-Safe”, starring Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau. (If I recall, there is no music in the entire B&W film.) In honor of the film, we post about a modern day fail-safe issue, less dramatic of course.

A crucial implicit requirement for class certification is that the plaintiff propose a workable, ascertainable class definition. One sub-set of this issue is the highly improper “fail-safe” class in which absent class members can use an imprecise class definition to affirm their membership when the class wins, but assert they were never members of the class when the defendant wins. A recent federal case sees the court striking class allegations that fall under this impermissible “fail safe” class rubric. See Sauter v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-846 (S.D. Ohio, 5/7/14).

The Plaintiff brought a putative class action against the Defendant for alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), 47 U.S.C. § 227. Plaintiff alleged that the class received phone calls from CVS, which utilized an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) to call, without the Plaintiffs’ consent.  The call allegedly provided general information about a prescription refill and the location of his local CVS pharmacy.  (actually sounds kind of useful, but we digress)

Defendant made a Motion to Strike Plaintiff’s Class Allegations. Most courts recognize that a motion to strike class action allegations may properly be filed before plaintiffs have filed a motion for class certification. See, e.g., Pilgrim v. Universal Health Card, LLC, 660 F.3d 943, 945 (6th Cir. 2011); Bearden v. Honeywell Intern., Inc., No. 3:09-01035, [2010 BL 63279], 2010 WL 1223936, at *9 (M.D. Tenn. Mar. 24, 2010).  A court may strike class action allegations before a motion for class certification where the complaint itself demonstrates that the requirements for maintaining a class action cannot be met. See Gen. Tel. Co. of Sw. v. Falcon, 457 U.S. 147, 160 (1982) (“Sometimes the issues are plain enough from the pleadings”).

The big issue here was whether the complaint proposed a fail-safe class.   A class definition is impermissible where it is a class that cannot be defined until the case is resolved on its merits. See Randleman v. Fidelity Nat’l Title Ins. Co., 646 F.3d 347, 352 (6th Cir. 2011). A fail-safe class is defined to in essence include only those who are entitled to relief.  Such a class is prohibited because it would allow putative class members to seek a remedy but not be bound by an adverse judgment — either those class members win or, by virtue of losing, they are not in the class and are not bound.

The various subclasses here included those who received calls and did not provide prior express written consent, and those who received calls who had expressly revoked their consent for such calls.  Thus, each of the Plaintiff’s proposed classes was defined to include only those individuals who did not expressly consent to the receipt of the defendant’s phone calls made with the use of an ATDS. Because the TCPA prohibits calls to cellular telephones using ATDSs unless prior express consent has been given, defining the class to include anyone who received such a call without prior express consent meant that only those potential members who would prevail on this liability issue would be members of the class.  In other words, the proposed classes consisted solely of persons who could establish that defendant violated the TCPA. Thus, if the Plaintiff successfully demonstrated that the Defendant made calls using an ATDS without the class members’ prior express consent, then the class members would win, said the court. However, if the Plaintiffs were unsuccessful in meeting their burden of proof, the class did not even not exist and the apparent class members (folks who got a call) would not be bound by the judgment in favor of the Defendant. This was the very definition of a prohibited fail-safe class.

So, motion granted; class allegations struck.