Roy Hobbs returned to baseball after 16 years; Grover Cleveland returned to the White House after a four year hiatus, and Gen. MacArthur returned to the Philippines in 1944.  Perhaps with less drama and certainly less fanfare, your humble blogger returns with today’s post on MassTortDefense.

A California federal judge recently denied the motion by customers of a San Francisco fertility clinic seeking class certification of their claims alleging that a defective storage tank damaged their embryos.  The case, In Re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation, No. 3:18-cv-01586, 2020 WL 3432689 (N.D. Cal. June 23, 2020), is interesting for the court’s treatment of superiority and damages issues in the class context.

Pacific Fertility provides fertility services including egg and embryo cryopreservation. Cryopreservation involves preservation of tissue using cooling techniques. In 2018, there was an apparent incident where one of the storage tanks lost coolant for a period of time. At the time of the incident, the tank contained eggs and embryos from 600+Pacific Fertility customers. All these eggs and embryos were exposed to the temperature increase. Plaintiffs were notified, and eventually sued.

We will skip the procedural history up to the point where Plaintiffs sought certification of a class of: All individuals, and their reproductive partners, whose eggs or embryos were in Tank 4 at Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco, California on the date of the incident.
Continue Reading Class Certification Denied in Cryopreservation Litigation