Mathes v. Woodbury County, 09-2314.

• Decision Date: 24 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-2314.,09-2314.
• Parties: Maureen RATTRAY; Lisa Lambert; Lori Mathes, Appellants, v. WOODBURY COUNTY, IA; Glenn J. Parrett, Individually and as Sheriff of Woodbury County; Robert E. Aspleaf, individually and as Assistant Chief/Deputy of Woodbury County, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

614 F.3d 831

Maureen RATTRAY; Lisa Lambert; Lori Mathes, Appellants,

v.WOODBURY COUNTY, IA; Glenn J. Parrett, Individually and as Sheriff of Woodbury County; Robert E. Aspleaf, individually and as Assistant Chief/Deputy of Woodbury County, Appellees.

No. 09-2314.

United States Court of Appeals,Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: June 15, 2010.

Filed: Aug. 5, 2010.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Sept. 24, 2010.

Joan M. Fletcher, argued, Des Moines, IA, David A. O'Brien, Cedar Rapids, IA, Jean Pendleton, West Des Moines, IA, Megan J. Erickson, Des Moines, IA, on the brief, for appellant.

Douglas L. Phillips, argued, Sioux City, IA, for Appellee.

Before RILEY, Chief Judge, CLEVENGER, ¹ and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

Maureen Rattray filed a lawsuit against Woodbury County, Iowa (“the County”), alleging that she was strip searched illegally as part of the booking process at the Woodbury County Jail. Rattray subsequently moved to certify a class action. The district court ² denied Rattray's motion, ruling that Rattray failed to convince the court that she would adequately represent the interests of the class, as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(4), and that she did not satisfy any of the prerequisites of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b) for maintenance of a class action. Rattray brought this interlocutory appeal, and we affirm.

I.

On February 13, 2007, Rattray filed a complaint against the County and made the following factual allegations. At around 2:05 a.m. on August 19, 2006, Sioux City police officers arrested Rattray for first-offense driving under the influence, which is a serious misdemeanor in Iowa punishable by a minimum of forty-eight hours in jail. Iowa Code § 321J.2. The officers took Rattray to the Woodbury County Jail for booking. Before placing Rattray in a holding cell, two female jailers ordered Rattray to remove her clothes for a strip search, and Rattray complied. The jailers performed a cavity search of Rattray's vaginal and genital area. While still naked, Rattray was escorted to a holding cell. Inside the holding cell, the jailers performed a second cavity search before permitting Rattray to dress in a jail uniform.

Rattray's initial complaint alleged that the strip search and cavity search were conducted without reasonable suspicion to believe that she possessed a weapon or contraband, and thus constituted a violation of her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. In addition, paragraph 40 of the complaint asserted that “[t]he Woodbury County Sherriff's [sic] Department's policy, regulation, official decision, custom, or usage for strip/cavity searching those arrested for offenses other than scheduled violations (code section) or simple misdemeanors is that arrestees can be and are strip/cavity searched, as was [Rattray,] without at least a reasonable suspicion” that the arrestee possessed a weapon or contraband. Paragraph 41 continued that the County “thus has a policy, regulation, official decision, custom, or usage for those arrested for anything other than a scheduled violation (code citation) or simple misdemeanor that violates such arrestees' fourth amendment rights.”

On October 15, 2007, Rattray moved for leave to amend her complaint to assert a class action. Rattray asserted in the motion that she had learned through discovery in August 2007 that the County had a policy requiring strip searches for all arrestees who were accused of a serious misdemeanor. Under the policy, the existence of which the County admitted, an individual arrested for a serious misdemeanor was strip searched without regard to whether jailers reasonably suspected that the arrestee possessed a weapon or contraband. Rattray sought to represent a class of “[a]ll persons arrested for a serious misdemeanor and strip searched pursuant to defendant jail's across-the-board strip search policy.” On October 31, a magistrate judge granted Rattray's motion for leave to amend, ruling that Rattray had shown good cause for not amending her complaint as a matter of right within the time limits of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a).

Rattray filed her amended complaint on October 31. The new complaint added factual allegations that pertained to the proposed class, and asserted that the claims of the potential class members “are all based on a single, unwritten, across-the-board strip search policy.” Rattray sought damages on behalf of the class, attorneys' fees, interest and costs, and other relief deemed appropriate. The amended complaint also requested declaratory and injunctive relief that would prohibit the County from strip searching, without reasonable suspicion, arrestees booked into the jail.

On April 28, 2008, nearly six months after filing her amended complaint, Rattray moved to certify the class. Rattray's brief in support of her motion alleged that the proposed class consisted of an estimated 1757 individuals arrested on serious misdemeanor charges from February 13, 2005, to October 15, 2007, the date on which the County discontinued the strip search requirement for arrestees accused of serious misdemeanors. Rattray asserted that the class action could be brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3), which allows certification when common questions of law or fact “predominate” over individual questions and a class action is “superior” to other methods of adjudicating the controversy, or under Rule 23(b)(1)(A), which permits certification when actions by individual class members create the risk of “inconsistent or varying adjudications” that would establish “incompatible standards of conduct” for the defendant. ³

The County resisted the motion to certify. The County challenged Rattray's assertion that she did not move for class certification earlier because she did not learn of the blanket strip search policy until discovery. Paragraph 40 of Rattray's initial complaint, according to the County, showed that Rattray was aware of the policy when she filed the complaint. While not questioning the capabilities of Rattray's counsel, the County argued that the delay in moving for class certification suggested that Rattray did not meet Rule 23(a)(4)'s requirement that the class representative would “fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.”

The County also contended that the class action could not be maintained under Rule 23(b)(3), because with respect to each member of the class, the court would be required to determine whether jailers had an objective basis for reasonable suspicion to support the strip search. The County argued that the question whether jailers had an objective basis for reasonable suspicion was specific to the facts of each case. In the County's view, the adjudication of an individual class member's claim would not affect any other individual claim, and thus certification under Rule 23(b)(1) also would be inappropriate.

The district court denied Rattray's motion to certify the class. Rattray v. Woodbury County, 253 F.R.D. 444 (N.D.Iowa 2008). The court determined that Rattray met the requirements of Rule 23(a)(1) through (3), but it was “not convinced” that Rattray would adequately represent the class, as required by Rule 23(a)(4). Id. at 457. In light of paragraph 40 of the initial complaint, the court found Rattray's claim “that she only recognized the potential for class litigation in August 2007 [to be] seriously suspect,” suggesting that Rattray could have filed a complaint on behalf of the class well before October 2007. Id. at 456. But “even more disturbing,” the court believed, was that nearly six months elapsed between the filing of the amended complaint and the filing of the motion to certify the class action in April 2008. Id. While opining that Rattray's attorneys were “otherwise very capable and experienced,” the court concluded that the course of litigation to that point evinced Rattray's “apparent lack of zeal to represent a class,” and the inexperience of Rattray's counsel in class action litigation. Id. at 456-57.

The district court then assumed for the sake of argument that Rattray satisfied Rule 23(a)(4), and proceeded to consider whether the class action could have been brought under one of the subsections of Rule 23(b). With respect to Rule 23(b)(3), the court rejected Rattray's argument that because class members were strip searched pursuant to the blanket jail policy, common questions predominated over individual ones. The court concluded that the predominant question was whether reasonable suspicion existed to justify strip searches of putative class members, and that the time-consuming review of each class member's arrest and jail records would “dwarf[ ] every other issue” in the case. Id. at 462-63. For the same reason, the district court ruled that a class action was not superior to other methods of adjudicating the dispute. Id. at 464-65. As to Rule 23(b)(1)(A), the court cited Rattray's concession in her certification motion that there was little risk of inconsistent judgments, and therefore rejected Rattray's argument that certification was proper under this subsection. Id. at 458-59.

Rattray petitioned this court, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f), to permit an interlocutory appeal of the district court's ruling. An administrative panel of the court granted the petition, and the case was assigned to this panel for decision.

II.

The district court may grant a motion to certify a class action only if the putative class representative satisfies all four of the requirements set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a), and the class action satisfies one of the three subsections of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b). Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 613-14, 117 S.Ct. 2231, 138 L.Ed.2d 689 (1997). In common shorthand, the requirements for class actions under Rule 23(a) are (1) numerosity, (2) commonality, (3) typicality, and (4)...