The Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) has praised the West Virginia Supreme Court’s decision on Dec. 2 to vacate a lower court certification of a class action as a tremendous step towards returning the class action mechanism to its intended function.
“We applaud the decision of the West Virginia Supreme Court in Chemtall, Inc. v. Madden,” Robert Hurns, PCI counsel and legislative database manager said. PCI filed an amicus brief in the case. “The high court in effect has determined that trial lawyers cannot impose West Virginia’s medical monitoring standards upon other states that have not adopted them.”
The case involves coal workers allegedly exposed to acrylamide while working in plants in West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia. The workers filed a class action lawsuit against various manufacturer defendants, with the class consisting of workers from the aforementioned states, as well as their offspring alleged to be “at increased risk of developing genetic abnormalities and diseases.”
On September 26, 2003, the circuit court certified the class. Petitioners took their challenge of the class certification to the West Virginia Supreme Court in April, and the court accepted the issue.
West Virginia has the nation’s most liberal law pertaining to “medical monitoring,” in which individuals who have been exposed to substances such as asbestos but are not currently ill are monitored, should the illness manifest down the road, if at all. Insurers have traditionally been required to pay for the heavy costs of this monitoring. PCI was concerned this liberal standard would be exported to other states by means of the class action mechanism.
PCI, along with the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Chemistry Council, the Coalition for Litigation Justice, Inc. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed an amicus brief. It argued the class certification should be reversed as the lawsuit included claimants from other states that did not recognize medical monitoring as a cause of action, therefore the requirement of “typicality” was not met.
The high court agreed, stating West Virginia law requires that claims must be “based on the same legal theory.” The court further stated the trial court “committed clear error in failing to consider West Virginia’s conflict of law doctrine and in failing to conduct a meaningful analysis of variations in the law of the several states included in the proposed class action.”
“The ruling in this case should serve as notice to lower courts that they should only certify classes where the class members properly meet the criteria for certification,” Hurns added.
“This decision helps restore the intention of the class action mechanism – where similar claims can be adjudicated on an economical and expedient basis,” he said. “Trial courts should make sure the proposed class actually meets the criteria enumerated for class certification, rather than conduct “drive-by certifications.'”
Topics Lawsuits Virginia West Virginia
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