Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 268
for plaintiffs seeking to certify expansive classes, especially where proving injury at trial
would require individualized adjudications.
The Sixth Circuit also confronted the issue of identifying injured class members in
Tarrify Properties, LLC, et al. v. Cuyahoga County, 37 F.4th 1101 (6th Cir. 2022). In
Tully, it affirmed the denial of certification of a putative class of owners of abandoned
properties to whom the defendant failed to reimburse the remaining equity when it
foreclosed on their properties. Given the many factors that influence property values,
the Sixth Circuit reasoned that determining whether any given property owner was owed
money required “proof that is variable in nature and ripe for variation in application,”
such that “mini-trials” would be necessary to determine the remaining equity in each
foreclosed property. Id. at 1106-07. Moreover, the issue was one of determining injury –
rather than damages – because “[t]he key impediment . . . is that the court must ask
whether a given property’s fair market value exceeds the taxes owed at the time of the
transfer to determine who is in the class.” Id. at 1106. The Sixth Circuit also rejected the
plaintiff’s proposal to use tax appraisal values to determine whether each property
owner had been harmed. It characterized that approach a “rough justice method” that
failed to sufficiently account for “the vagaries of” calculating “fair market value.” Id. at
1106-08.
F.
Reconsideration Motions Relative To Class Certification
In 2022, case law on the factors for reconsideration of class certification rulings
continued to evolve.
The decision in Mason’s Automotive Collision Center, LLC, et al. v. Auto-Owners
Insurance Co., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200663 (W.D. Ark. Nov. 3, 2022), illustrated that
trend. In Mason’s, the court found that alleged injuries due to property appraisals were
too individualized to meet the commonality requirement necessary for class certification.
The plaintiffs, a group of property owners, filed a class action alleging that the defendant
willfully and intentionally miscalculated covered property values in order to collect
increased co-insurance following damages from a tornado. The court previously had
granted the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The defendant filed a motion for
reconsideration of the ruling, and the court granted the motion and decertified the class.
The certified class had included all auto-owner policyholders who received a reduced
insurance payout due to the foundation of their properties being excluded from
insurance coverage, and included when the defendant calculated the property value for
co-insurance payments. The court reasoned that any common question to the class
would not be uniform because of several underlying individual questions, including
whether the insured’s foundation was excluded, how the class members’ property was
valued, and the type of appraisal completed. The court thereby determined that the
plaintiffs failed to meet the commonality requirement. The court also observed that it
would need to evaluate each class member’s claim files to evaluate liability and
damages. The court thus concluded that individualized issues predominated over any
common question that the proposed class members shared. For these reasons, the
court granted the motion for reconsideration and decertified the class.
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
