STEERING COMMITTEE v. EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION
No. 05-30781
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
August 18, 2006
Before DAVIS, BARKSDALE, and DeMOSS, Circuit Judges.
W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff-Appellants, members of a purported class alleging claims against Defendant-Appellee Exxon Mobil Corporation arising out of a fire in an Exxon Mobil facility, appeal the district court‘s order denying certification of a Rule 23(b)(3) plaintiff class in this mass tort action. A panel of this court granted Appellants’ petition for permission to appeal and we have jurisdiction to hear this interlocutory appeal under
On August 8, 1994, a recently installed control valve in Exxon Mobil‘s Baton Rouge Chemical Plant failed, resulting in sponge oil leaks. The oil ignited, and although the fire was controlled quickly, it burned until its fuel source was exhausted, sometime on the morning of August 11, 1994. During the time the fire was burning, the wind carried the smoke plume to the southwest and across the Mississippi River. Exxon Mobil conducted air monitoring both inside and outside the facility, and in the surrounding community during the time of the fire.
Hundreds of suits were soon filed against Exxon Mobil, alleging various causes of action including personal injury, personal discomfort and annoyance, emotional distress resulting from knowledge of exposure to hazardous substances, fear of future unauthorized exposures, and economic harm including damage to business and property, among others.
After the suits were consolidated, Appellants proposed class certification under Rule 23(b)(3) for all issues and with the following class definition:
All persons or entities residing or located, or owning property or operating businesses in East Baton Rouge Parish or West Baton Rouge Parish at the time of the incident at the Exxon Chemical Plan, Exxon Refinery, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on August 8, 1994, and who sustained legally cognizable damages, including but not limited to all claims for exemplary or punitive damages
as provided for in LSA-C.C. art. 2314.3, property damage, business loss, and all personal injury claims, and who have not settled their claims in full, and who have complied with and comply with all further orders of the court in this class action.1
Appellants also proposed two class representatives.
Following a hearing but before the court ruled on class certification, the court granted summary judgment to Exxon Mobil on certain categories of claims. First, the court granted summary judgment to Exxon Mobil on all claims for physical injuries and non-intentional emotional distress brought by individual plaintiffs who were located outside the geographic area that the air modeling experts agreed was affected by the plume. Second, the court granted summary judgment to Exxon Mobil on all claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Following the entry of its summary judgment, the court denied Appellants’ motion for class certification, concluding that Appellants failed to satisfy the typicality and adequacy requirements of Rule 23(a), as well as the predominance and superiority requirements of Rule 23(b)(3). The Appellants were granted permission to appeal the denial of class certification pursuant to Rule 23(f), and this appeal followed.
A.
We review the denial of class certification for abuse of discretion. See O‘Sullivan v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 319 F.3d 732, 738 (5th Cir. 2003). Because, however, a court by definition abuses its discretion when it applies an incorrect legal standard, we review such errors de novo. Id. Moreover, although the district court has substantial discretion, the “district court must conduct a rigorous analysis of the rule 23 prerequisites before certifying a class.” Castano v. American Tobacco Co., 84 F.3d 734, 740 (5th Cir. 1996). Additionally, a “party seeking certification bears the burden of proof.” Id.
Rule 23(a) provides four prerequisites to a class action: (1) a class “so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable“; (2) “questions of law or fact common to the class“; (3) named parties’ claims or defenses “typical ... of the class“; and (4) representatives that “will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.”
The district court in this case assumed for purposes of its order that the plaintiffs could satisfy the numerosity and commonality questions, but concluded that plaintiffs failed to satisfy the typicality, adequacy, predominance, or superiority requirements. We agree that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate either predominance or superiority, and because failure on those two requirements dooms class certification under Rule 23(b)(3), we decline to address the remaining requirements.
B.
The predominance inquiry requires that questions of law or fact common to the members of the class “predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” Unger v. Amedisys Inc., 401 F.3d 316, 320 (5th Cir. 2005) (quoting Berger v. Compaq Computer Corp., 257 F.3d 475, 479-80 (5th Cir. 2001)). The cause of action as a whole must satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)‘s predominance requirement. Castano, 84 F.3d at 745 n. 21. This requirement,
Appellants argue that the district court erred in concluding that the proposed class definition failed to satisfy the predominance requirement. Appellants argue that because the alleged injuries all arise from the single incident at the Exxon Mobil plant, the issues relating to Exxon Mobil‘s liability predominate over individual issues of causation and damages. Appellee argues that the district court correctly concluded that the individualized medical causation, injury, and damages issues were the predominant issues in the case, and therefore that a class action was an inappropriate vehicle for resolution.
The district court heard from experts who opined that the primary issues left to be resolved would turn on location, exposure, dose, susceptibility to illness, nature of symptoms, type and cost of medical treatment, and subsequent impact of illnesses on individuals. Moreover, in addition to the personal injury claims, separate types of proof would be necessary for the property damage, devaluation, and business loss claims. The district court observed that each plaintiff‘s claims will be
As Appellants argue, the necessity of calculating damages on an individual basis will not necessarily preclude class certification. See Bell, 339 F.3d at 306. However, where individual damages cannot be determined by reference to a mathematical or formulaic calculation, the damages issue may predominate over any common issues shared by the class. Id. at 308 (holding that “class certification is not appropriate” because plaintiffs “failed to demonstrate that the calculation of individualized actual economic damages, if any, suffered by the class members can be performed in accordance with the predominance requirement“); O‘Sullivan, 319 F.3d at 745 (holding that district court abused its discretion in certifying class “[i]n light of the individual calculation of damages that is required“); Allison v. Citgo Petroleum Corp., 151 F.3d 402, 419 (5th Cir. 1998) (holding that certification under Rule 23(b)(3)
It is clear from the record that the damages claims in this case are not subject to any sort of formulaic calculation. Instead, each individual plaintiff suffered different alleged periods and magnitudes of exposure and suffered different alleged symptoms as a result. Some plaintiffs allege both personal and property injuries, while others allege only one or the other. Moreover, many plaintiffs allege as part of their claim for compensatory damages emotional and other intangible injuries. “The very nature of these damages, compensating plaintiffs for emotional and other intangible injuries, necessarily implicates the subjective differences of each plaintiff‘s circumstances; they are an individual, not class-wide, remedy. The amount of compensatory damages to which any individual class member might be entitled cannot be calculated by objective standards.” Allison, 151 F.3d at 417 (footnote omitted).
Appellants rely principally on two cases in which mass tort classes were certified, Sala v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 120 F.R.D. 494 (E.D. Pa. 1998) (train derailment), and Sterling v. Velsicol Chemical Corp., 855 F.2d 1188 (6th Cir. 1988) (water contamination). However, Appellants do no more than recite the disposition in each of those cases; little effort is made to relate the results in those cases to the facts of the case now before this court. Indeed, Appellants’ citation of Sala and Sterling does little more than prove that it is theoretically possible to satisfy the predominance and superiority requirements of Rule 23(b)(3) in a mass tort or mass accident class action, a proposition this court has already accepted. See, e.g., Watson v. Shell Oil Co., 979 F.2d 1014, 1022-23 (5th Cir. 1992) (affirming class certification of claims arising from refinery explosion).
Importantly, the court in Sala determined that the claims in that case involved injuries sustained from a single cause: the collision and derailment of the train on which they were riding. Thus, causation could be adjudicated on a class-wide basis. In this case, although the alleged cause of the injuries is also a single accident-a refinery fire-the causal mechanism for plaintiff‘s injuries-alleged exposure or fear of exposure to toxic substances-is not so straightforward. While it is certainly true that the cause of the fire itself is an issue common to the class, each individual plaintiff must meet his or her own burden of medical causation, which in turn will depend on any number of the factors enumerated by the experts who testified at the class certification hearing.
Notably, moreover, the class certified in Sterling was bifurcated, with class treatment limited to certain class-wide liability issues. See Sterling, 855 F.2d at 1197 (“However, individual members of the class still will be required to submit evidence concerning their particularized damage claims in subsequent proceedings.“). Similarly, the court in Sala
Although Appellants’ counsel during oral argument to this court briefly suggested subclasses or bifurcation as a remedy for the obstacles preventing a finding of predominance in this case, the record does not reflect that counsel made such a proposal to the district court. Certainly, when the parties moving for class certification have full opportunity to present to the district court proposals for their preferred form of class treatment, the district court is under no obligation to sua sponte consider other variations not proposed by any party. See United States Parole Commission v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 408 (1980) (“[I]t is not the District Court that is to bear the burden of constructing subclasses. That burden is upon the [party proposing certification] and it is he who is required to submit proposals to the court. The court has no sua sponte obligation so to act.“). We need not now consider whether bifurcation or subclasses would remedy Appellants’ difficulties in this case, because Appellants’ counsel never proposed either. We agree with the district court that Appellants have not met their burden of
C.
Appellants also argue that the district court erred in concluding that the proposed class action did not provide a superior vehicle for resolving the suits. The district court concluded that because of the predominance of individual causation and damage issues, it would not be efficient to certify a class. The district court also noted that the case has already been streamlined using other case management tools, including narrowing the claims and potential plaintiffs through summary judgment, and facilitating the disposition of the remaining plaintiffs’ claims through issuance of a Lone Pine order.2
Because all Rule 23 class-action requirements must be satisfied, and we hold the predominance factor is not, we need not address the superiority factor. However, we address this
A “mass accident” resulting in injuries to numerous persons is ordinarily not appropriate for a class action because of the likelihood that significant questions, not only of damages but of liability and defenses to liability, would be present, affecting the individuals in different ways. In these circumstances an action conducted nominally as a class action would degenerate in practice into multiple lawsuits separately tried.
As this court has noted, the predominance of individual issues relating to the plaintiffs’ claims for compensatory and punitive damages detracts from the superiority of the class action device in resolving these claims. See Allison, 151 F.3d at 419; Castano, 84 F.3d at 745. Particularly in this case, where the district court has been careful to manage the litigation efficiently through the judicious use of consolidated summary
V.
Because we agree that Appellants failed to demonstrate that their proposed class satisfied either the predominance or superiority requirements of Rule 23(b)(3), we affirm the district court‘s denial of class certification.
AFFIRMED.