Class Action Blog

The Eight Circuit recently reversed and remanded a district court’s class certification. The class plaintiff sued on grounds that defendant’s vacuums were deceptively advertised, violating the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act (MMPA) as well as breach of express and implied warranties, unjust enrichment, and “violation of other states’ consumer protection laws, and redhibition (on behalf of a Louisiana sub-class).” The district court found that Missouri Law applied after applying Missouri’s choice of law rules and then certified a class under Rule 23(b)(3). Defendant Emerson Electric sought and was granted a Rule 23(f) appeal.

GEO Group (GEO) owned and operated a private contract detention facility in Aurora, Colorado (Aurora Facility) under a contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). The Aurora Facility had in place (1) a housing unit Sanitation Policy (Policy) which required all of its detainees to clean their common living areas, and (2) a Voluntary Work Program (VWP) which paid working detainees $1.00 a day for performing various jobs. The detainees filed suit alleging that the Policy violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which prohibited forced labor and the VWP violated the Colorado unjust enrichment law by paying the detainees only $1.00 a day. The District Court certified a TVPA class, which included all of the detainees housed at the Aurora Facility in the prior 10 years, and an Unjust Enrichment Class, which included all detainees who participated in the Aurora Facility’s VWP the prior three years. GEO filed a Rule 23(f) petition for permission to appeal challenging the class certifications. GEO primarily contended that certifying the claims was unjustified because proving the claims “require[d] predominantly individualized determinations, making class treatment inappropriate.” The 10th Circuit affirmed.