Beckert v. TPLC Holdings, Inc.

221 F.3d 870
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJuly 19, 2000
DocketNos. 99-3476 to 99-3480
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 221 F.3d 870 (Beckert v. TPLC Holdings, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Beckert v. TPLC Holdings, Inc., 221 F.3d 870 (6th Cir. 2000).

Opinion

OPINION

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

I. Introduction and Summary

The traditional norm of our legal system is the adversary trial by an individual plaintiff claiming redress for a particular wrong. The question before us is how far the courts should go in allowing class action, mass tort cases to deviate from that tradition. More specifically, this appeal asks us to interpret and apply the recent Supreme Court class action case of Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U.S. 815, 119 S.Ct. 2295, 144 L.Ed.2d 715 (1999). It holds that a “mandatory” class (a class that generally does not give individual notice to members or allow them to opt out) may not be certified, or a settlement approved, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(1)(B)1 based simply on an unconven[873]*873tional “limited fund” created by the defendants through a settlement of their liability. (The traditional “limited fund” is a pool of money coming from an outside source, the amount of which is not subject to manipulation by the parties.) We must apply Ortiz to this class action claiming that defective pacemakers were implanted in the hearts of approximately 40,000 individuals. The appeal is from the district court’s order certifying, on a “limited fund” rationale, a non-opt-out class and approving a mandatory class-action settlement of $57 million. Members of the class object to the settlement on grounds that it unfairly releases from liability the parent corporations of the manufacturers of the defective pacemakers which hold substantial assets, was not the result of arms-length negotiations among the interested parties and overcompensates the plaintiffs’ lawyers as an incentive for them to settle the cases of absent class members. The district court below had relied on the Fifth Circuit decision that the Supreme Court later reversed in Ortiz. Flanagan v. Ahearn (In re Asbestos Litig.), 134 F.3d 668 (5th Cir.1998), rev’d, Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U.S. 815, 119 S.Ct. 2295, 144 L.Ed.2d 715 (1999). We conclude that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Ortiz, reversing the Fifth Circuit, requires that the mandatory Rule 23(b)(1)(B) class certified by the district court here must be decerti-fied and that the settlement approved by the district court must be disapproved.

In Ortiz the Supreme Court was again faced with a large class of asbestos claimants suing a manufacturer, which had in turn sued its two insurance carriers for funds to pay the claimants. Negotiations between the lawyers for the class and the manufacturer and the two insurance companies produced a settlement fund of $1.525 billion, contingent on certification under Rule 23(b)(1)(B) as a mandatory class, and approval of the settlement on a limited fund theory. The lower courts certified the claimants as a Rule 23(b)(1)(B) mandatory, non-opt-out class and approved the settlement because they believed that on balance it was in the best interests of the claimants who otherwise stood to lose the fund should the insurance companies win their pending no-coverage cases.

The Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit in Ortiz by a 7 to 2 vote. The Court concluded that applicants for certification on a limited fund theory under Rule 23(b)(1)(B) “must show that the fund is limited by more than the agreement of the parties.” Ortiz, 119 S.Ct. at 2302. The Court reached this conclusion because such a mandatory class-action settlement runs head long into long-established principles of due process, the Seventh Amendment right of trial by jury and the “principle of general application in Anglo-American jurisprudence that one is not bound by a judgment in personam in a litigation in which he is not a designated party or to which he has not been made a party by service of process.” 119 S.Ct. at 2314 (quoting Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32, 40, 61 S.Ct. 115, 85 L.Ed. 22 (1940)).

One of the problems with compromising the rights of absent class members under Rule 23(b)(1)(B) through global mass tort settlements distributed on a mandatory basis arises from the perverse set of incen[874]*874tives it may provide defendants and class action lawyers — “the potential for gigantic fees.” 119 S.Ct. at 2317. The defendants may be able to settle cases by providing, relatively speaking, a small amount of money for seriously injured class members while providing large attorney fees for lawyers for the class as an inducement to settlement. If the courts deviate very far from the traditional or strict limited fund theory by allowing a limited fund to be created purely by settlement, the legal system runs the risk of eliminating adversary trials conducted to redress wrongs individually by actual plaintiffs through a process by which defendants pay off a small group of plaintiffs’ class action lawyers who actually represent other parties. We must apply these principles discussed in Ortiz to the case at hand.

While there are factual differences between the present case and Ortiz, the similarities with the structural problems identified in Ortiz make approval of the settlement in this ease inappropriate. Like Ortiz, the settlement herein varies greatly from the traditional model. Many aspects of the settlement undermine the protections for the class that are inherently guaranteed by the traditional model. In addition, this case presents a less appropriate case on the facts than Ortiz. TPLC’s corporate parents were released from liability without close scrutiny by the parties as to whether they might be liable. The facts that came out during the personal jurisdiction phase of the litigation below make it doubtful that they would have escaped all liability had they been forced to go to trial. District Judge Spiegel, who has given careful and intelligent consideration to this important case, so found at one point in his rulings on motions. There seems to be no dispute that the parent corporations have sufficient funds to undertake individual litigation and to pay any claims that might result. Their release, therefore, undermines the appropriateness of the settlement even more than the settlement in Ortiz. Like the settlement in Ortiz, the funds available are limited only by agreement of the parties, not because the funds do not exist as a factual matter, and the amount contributed by the parents is small compared to their potential liability.

II. Facts and Procedural History

This products liability class-action litigation was brought on behalf of individuals implanted with the Telectronics Accufix Atrial “J” pacemaker lead. The lead is implanted in the atrium of the heart as part of a pacemaker device used to restore normal heartbeat. It was determined in 1994 that some of the lead wires had a tendency to break, coming through the polyurethane coating and potentially causing injury to the heart and blood vessels. TPLC-manufactured leads of this type were implanted in about 40,000 persons world-wide, including about 25,000 persons in the United States.

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221 F.3d 870, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/beckert-v-tplc-holdings-inc-ca6-2000.