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U.S. Supreme Court justices rule in closely-watched class action case

By: DOLAN MEDIA NEWSWIRES//March 29, 2013//

U.S. Supreme Court justices rule in closely-watched class action case

By: DOLAN MEDIA NEWSWIRES//March 29, 2013//

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By Pat Murphy
Dolan Media Newswires

A consumer class action should not have been certified because the plaintiffs’ expert testimony failed to establish that the case was susceptible to awarding damages on a class-wide basis, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4.

The decision reversed a ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The plaintiffs in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend are six non-basic cable television programming services customers in the greater Philadelphia market. They sued Comcast for violating various antitrust provisions of the Sherman Act.

According to the plaintiffs, Comcast violated the Act by engaging in “clustering” and “overbuilding” schemes with the purpose of eliminating competition in market. The plaintiffs alleged that they suffered higher prices for cable services as a result of Comcast’s anti-competitive conduct.

Comcast argued that class certification was improper under Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes (131 S.Ct. 2541) because the plaintiffs’ expert failed to provide a workable model to measure damages on a class-wide basis.

In Wal-Mart, the court held that certification is proper only if, after a “rigorous analysis” that frequently entails “some overlap of the merits,” it is shown that the requirements for class certification have been met.

The court here agreed that the class of Comcast customers should not have been certified, finding that the damages model proposed by the plaintiffs’ expert failed to “bridge the differences between supra-competitive prices in general and supra-competitive prices attributable to the deterrence of overbuilding.”

The court explained that “it is clear that, under the proper standard for evaluating certification, [the plaintiffs’] model falls far short of establishing that damages are capable of measurement on a classwide basis. Without presenting another methodology, [the plaintiffs] cannot show Rule 23(b)(3) predominance: Questions of individual damage calculations will inevitably overwhelm questions common to the class.”

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer wrote a dissent, in which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined.

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