I’m going to try a new semi-regular feature, which is to provide summaries of some of the seminal cases on which class-action defendants frequently rely. Instead of focusing on the tactics that led to these rulings, I’ll be highlighting the most commonly-used passages, as well as some that may be wrongly overlooked.

We’ll start this out with In re Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (7th Cir. 1995). In re Rhone-Poulenc Rorer involved a particularly difficult set of facts: a proposed class of HIV-positive hemophiliacs sued a group of drug companies that manufactured blood solids. Because the companies did not know enough about how HIV was spread, they had not screened properly for the disease, and had inadvertently infected the members of the class. (The hemophiliacs needed blood solids to provide the clotting factor that their blood lacked.) The plaintiffs sought certification of a class asserting two theories, a conventional negligence theory (the drug companies should have had better screening procedures for HIV), and a more inventive "serendipity" negligence theory (had the drug companies done a better job of screening against Hepatitis B, they would also have caught the HIV-infected blood).

The trial court certified the proposed class. Since Rule 23(f) (allowing for interlocutory appeals of class certification orders) did not yet exist, the defendants sought a writ of mandamus from the Seventh Circuit. A panel of the Seventh Circuit led by then-Chief Judge Richard Posner granted mandamus and reversed the certification order. In doing so, it made the following observations that have proven useful to defendants:

Certified classes create intense pressure to settle.

Suppose that 5,000 of the potential class members are not yet barred by the statute of limitations. And suppose the named plaintiffs in Wadleigh win the class portion of this case to the extent of establishing the defendants’ liability under either of the two negligence theories. It is true that this would only be prima facie liability, that the defendants would have various defenses. But they could not be confident that the defenses would prevail. They might, therefore, easily be facing $25 billion in potential liability (conceivably more), and with it bankruptcy. They may not wish to roll these dice. That is putting it mildly. They will be under intense pressure to settle.

The law of negligence varies from state to state.

The law of negligence, including subsidiary concepts such as duty of care, foreseeability, and proximate cause, may as the plaintiffs have argued forcefully to us differ among the states only in nuance, though we think not, for a reason discussed later. But nuance can be important, and its significance is suggested by a comparison of differing state pattern instructions on negligence and differing judicial formulations of the meaning of negligence and the subordinate concepts.

Or, as Posner put it, quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes,

"The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified." The voices of the quasi-sovereigns that are the states of the United States sing negligence with a different pitch.

(Internal citations omitted.)

Courts must be careful when bifurcating a class action.

Bifurcation and even finer divisions of lawsuits into separate trials are authorized in federal district courts. And a decision to employ the procedure is reviewed deferentially. However, as we have been at pains to stress recently, the district judge must carve at the joint.

(Internal citations omitted.)  How does one tell an improper bifurcation?

The first jury will not determine liability. It will determine merely whether one or more of the defendants was negligent under one of the two theories. The first jury may go on to decide the additional issues with regard to the named plaintiffs. But it will not decide them with regard to the other class members. Unless the defendants settle, a second (and third, and fourth, and hundredth, and conceivably thousandth) jury will have to decide, in individual follow-on litigation by class members not named as plaintiffs in the Wadleigh case, such issues as comparative negligence — did any class members knowingly continue to use unsafe blood solids after they learned or should have learned of the risk of contamination with HIV? — and proximate causation. Both issues overlap the issue of the defendants’ negligence.

So what are the primary takeaways from In re Rhone-Poulenc Rorer? Defendants should make sure they put the plaintiff to their burden. Rushed state law analyses and underdeveloped trial plans are not enough.