Class Certification

For a class action to be certified, all of the elements of Rule 23 must be satisfied. Basically, in order for there to be a class action case, there must be a particular class and a named plaintiff that is a member of the class. The class needs to be clearly and properly defined. That way, the trial court will be able to easily manage the class. Class certification is made within “the trial court’s discretion.” Essentially, the party seeking class certification has the responsibility of establishing and maintaining all of the required prerequisites.

A significant prerequisite for class action is individual standing. It is vital to class certification and all stages of class action litigation. Commonality is also an important prerequisite. In order for there to be “representation” for the group, there must be some facts that are “common” to the group. If there is a substantial conflict of interest between the class members and the class representatives, there will not be class certification.

Rule 23 also determines that “the class must be of sufficient numerosity to make joinder impracticable.” The numerosity requirement is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, the court has wide discretion and loose parameters when considering numerosity, and they take into account the unique facts and context of each case. In general, when the class includes forty or more members, the numerosity requirement is satisfied. If the class includes twenty-one or fewer members, then the numerosity requirement is not satisfied. The main issue that the court considers is whether the class is too large to make joinder impracticable.

California’s Premier Class Certification Attorneys

At Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik, our attorneys have had great success certifying classes of employees who have been similarly wronged by their current or former employer’s illegal practices. For information about our approach to certifying a class of employees, contact our La Jolla office for a free consultation. We represent workers in class action lawsuits on a contingency basis.