UCL/class certification redux
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down a decision, Prince v. CLS Transportation, Inc., ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (May 26, 2004), that stands in sharp contrast to Newell v. State Farm General Ins. Co., ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (April 26, 2004), which was ordered published last Friday and is discussed in my post here. In Prince, the court took quite a different view of the propriety of disposing of class action allegations on demurrer, and reversed a trial court order doing just that. Like Newell, Prince also involved a UCL claim, but notably, the court found no need to consider the UCL claim separately from the other claims. Nor did the Prince court cite Newell. After exhaustively cataloging the other relevant cases, the court concluded: "it is only in mass tort actions (or other actions equally unsuited to class action treatment) that class suitability can and should be determined at the pleading stage. In other cases, ... class suitability should not be determined by demurrer." That is quite a statement. It should apply broadly to most UCL actions.
- posted by Kim Kralowec @ 6:48 PM