Parko v. Shell Oil Co.

• Decision Date: 10 March 2014
• Docket Number: 13–8024.,Nos. 13–8023,s. 13–8023
• Citation: 739 F.3d 1083
• Parties: Jeana PARKO, et al., Plaintiffs, v. SHELL OIL CO., et al., Petitions of Conocophillips Co., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

739 F.3d 1083

Jeana PARKO, et al., Plaintiffs,

v.SHELL OIL CO., et al., Petitions of Conocophillips Co., et al., Defendants.

Nos. 13–8023, 13–8024.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Submitted Oct. 23, 2013.

Decided Jan. 17, 2014.

Rehearing Denied March 10, 2014.

Derek Yeats Brandt, Attorney, Simmons Browder Gianaris Angelides & Barnerd, Alton, IL, for Plaintiffs.

Beth A. Bauer, Attorney, Hepler Broom LLC, Edwardsville, IL, Christopher Clarke Posteraro, Attorney, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Washington, DC, Richard B. Korn, Attorney, Fox Galvin, St. Louis, MO, for Defendants.

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The district court certified a class of property owners in Roxana (a tiny village in southwestern Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis) in a suit against Shell Oil Company, which (together with Shell subsidiaries also joined as defendants) until 2000 owned and operated an oil refinery (the Wood River Refinery, built in 1918) that is adjacent to the village. The suit is also against ConocoPhillips (and some of its subsidiaries), which bought the refinery from Shell that year and is its current owner and operator. The plaintiffs claim that the refinery has leaked benzene and other contaminants into the groundwater under the class members' homes. The suit, a diversity suit, charges nuisance and related torts in violation of Illinois common law, and seeks by way of remedy damages measured primarily by the effect of the groundwater contamination on the value of the class members' properties.

The defendants have petitioned us for leave to appeal the certification of the class. Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(f). We have decided to grant their request in order to clarify class action law, see Blair v. Equifax Check Services, Inc., 181 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir.1999), with respect to district courts' responsibility to perform a “rigorous analysis” before determining that issues common to the class predominate over issues that differ among the individual class members. Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, ––– U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 1426, 1432, 185 L.Ed.2d 515 (2013); General Telephone Co. of the Southwest v. Falcon, 457 U.S. 147, 161, 102 S.Ct. 2364, 72 L.Ed.2d 740 (1982). Because the petitions and response address the certification issue comprehensively, we proceed to resolve the issue without requiring further briefing.

The defendants also challenge—and we'll discuss this challenge briefly before getting to the issue of predominance—the district judge's ruling that the class is large enough to satisfy the “numerosity” requirement of Rule 23(a)(1) (that is, that it's too large for joinder of plaintiffs to be a feasible alternative to a class action). There appear to be about 150 class members. The defendants do not argue that such a class is small enough for joinder to be a feasible, let alone a superior, alternative to a class action. But they say that a number of the class members were not injured—either their groundwater was not contaminated by leakage from the refinery or the contamination did not affect the value of their property—and so lack standing to obtain relief and therefore don't belong in the class. And if those class members are subtracted, the defendants contend, there are no longer enough members to make a class action a superior procedural vehicle to joinder of individual plaintiffs.

We reject the argument. To require the district judge to determine whether each of the 150 members of the class has sustained an injury—on the theory that if 140 have not, and so lack standing, and so should be dropped from the class, certification should be denied and the 10 remaining plaintiffs be forced to sue (whether jointly or individually)—would make the class certification process unworkable; the process would require, in this case, 150 trials before the class could be certified. The defendants are thus asking us to put the cart before the horse. How many (if any) of the class members have a valid claim is the issue to be determined after the class is certified.

The district judge identified a question common to the class—namely whether the defendants' “failure to contain petroleum byproduct at the refinery result[ed] in contamination to Roxana property.” The defendants argue that this ruling does not establish the predominance of issues common to the entire class over issues that vary among the members of the class. And predominance is of course one of the requirements for class certification if damages are sought. Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(b)(3).

Predominance is a qualitative rather than a quantitative concept. It is not determined simply by counting noses: that is, determining whether there are more common issues or more individual issues, regardless of relative importance. In Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds, ––– U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 1184, 1196, 185 L.Ed.2d 308 (2013), the Supreme Court said that the requirement of predominance is not satisfied if “individual questions ... overwhelm questions common to the class.” And in Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 623, 117 S.Ct. 2231, 138 L.Ed.2d 689 (1997), the Court said that the “predominance inquiry tests whether proposed classes are sufficiently cohesive to warrant adjudication by representation.” See also In re Inter–Op Hip Prosthesis Liability Litigation, 204 F.R.D. 330, 345 (N.D.Ohio 2001) (“common issues need only predominate, not outnumber individual issues”).

Predominance of issues common to all class members, like the other requirements for certification of a suit as a class action, goes to the efficiency of a class action as an alternative to individual suits. If resolving a common issue will not greatly simplify the litigation to judgment or settlement of claims of hundred or thousands of claimants, the complications, the unwieldiness, the delay, and the danger that class treatment would expose the defendant or defendants to settlement-forcing risk are not costs worth incurring.

Mere assertion by class counsel that common issues predominate is not enough. That would be too facile. Certification would be virtually automatic. And so Rule 23 “does not set forth a mere pleading standard.” Wal–Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2541, 2551, 180 L.Ed.2d 374 (2011). Rather, when factual disputes bear on issues vital to certification (that is, to whether the suit should be allowed to be litigated as a class action), such as predominance, the court must “receive evidence ... and resolve the disputes before deciding whether to certify the case.” Szabo v. Bridgeport Machines, Inc., 249 F.3d 672, 676 (7th Cir.2001); see also Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, supra, 133 S.Ct. at 1432;Butler v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 727 F.3d 796, 800–01 (7th Cir.2013).

The defendants contend that the contamination alleged by the plaintiffs occurred over a 90–year period and involved acts and omissions charged against the six defendants, and maybe other polluters as well (because the area in which the refinery is located is industrial, and the defendants have identified oil leaks by gas stations and other companies), and that in...