The Determinants of Class Certification After In re Tobacco II

Class actions are a powerful tool for consumer plaintiffs who believe they were harmed by a defendant’s false advertising, since they enable the aggregation of large numbers of claims that, if prosecuted separately, might be too small to justify the costs of litigating. Indeed, a court’s denial of class certification is commonly viewed as the death knell of the litigation. In California as elsewhere, there are various prerequisites to obtain certification of a class action. These include that there be “a well-defined community of interest” among the class members, which, in turn, “‘embodies three factors: (1) predominant common questions and law or fact [i.e., commonality]; (2) class representatives with claims or defenses typical of the class [i.e., typicality]; and (3) class representatives who can adequately represent the class [i.e., adequacy].’”