Abla v. Brinker Restaurant Corp., 279 F.R.D. 51

Plaintiffs Abdel Abla and Erwin Aguilar were Maggiano’s servers in Boston and handled banquet events with service charges added to bills.
Defendants’ practice charged a service charge of ~18–20% on banquet bills; dispute is whether full proceeds were remitted to servers.
Plaintiffs assert customers were not informed that service charges were not tips, reducing servers’ tip-like receipts.
Plaintiffs seek national class and a Massachusetts subclass; subclasses include those with wages below MA minimum wage.
Massachusetts subclass settlement funds and an agreed-upon releases affect the dynamics of pursuing a national class; Aguilar has partial releases.
Court denied Plaintiffs’ Motion to Certify Class, finding lack of adequacy and failure to satisfy Rule 23(b)(3) predominance and superiority.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Adequacy of class representative under Rule 23(a)	Aguilar should represent the national class	Aguilar lacks alignment due to partial settlement	Aguilar inadequate under Rule 23(a)
Predominance under Rule 23(b)(3)	Common questions predominate across states	Individual banquet contracts and vary by location	Predominance not satisfied; class certification denied
Superiority under Rule 23(b)(3)	Class action is superior method for uniform relief	State-wide/individual actions are feasible and better	Superiority not satisfied; class certification denied

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (U.S. 2011) (designates rigorous analysis for Rule 23 assumptions)
Overka v. American Airlines, 265 F.R.D. 14 (D. Mass. 2010) (adequacy and class representation considerations in mass torts/class actions)
Amchem Prods. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591 (U.S. 1997) (predominance is more demanding than commonality; Rule 23(b)(3) stringent)
In re Relafen Antitrust Litig., 218 F.R.D. 337 (D. Mass. 2003) (guides balancing of common vs. individual issues in certification)