![]() For class certification purposes, the Court held that the key inquiry was whether common questions predominate over individual ones. ![]() The Court rejected a categorical rule that a class could not be certified when it contained more than a de minimis number of uninjured class members. Sitting en banc, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Ninth Circuit panel decision and reinstated the district court’s order certifying the subclasses. The three-judge panel held that to establish predominance with regard to common impact the number of uninjured class members must be, at most, “ de minimis.” In April 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a district court order certifying three classes in the lawsuit, finding that the district court erred in determining that plaintiffs had satisfied the predominance requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) (the ruling is discussed in detail here) because the classes contained a significant number of uninjured class members. Plaintiffs alleged that defendants colluded to artificially inflate the prices of their tuna products by engaging in various forms of anti-competitive conduct and therefore violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and California’s Cartwright Act. On April 8, 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed an earlier district court order that certified three subclasses of tuna purchasers in a class action lawsuit alleging that defendants violated federal and state antitrust laws.
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