Flanagan v. Allstate Insurance

228 F.R.D. 617, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10701, 2005 WL 497800
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedMarch 1, 2005
DocketNo. 01 C 1541
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 228 F.R.D. 617 (Flanagan v. Allstate Insurance) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Flanagan v. Allstate Insurance, 228 F.R.D. 617, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10701, 2005 WL 497800 (N.D. Ill. 2005).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

MORAN, Senior District Judge.

After granting class certification for plaintiffs’ section 510 ERISA claim against defendants, Allstate Insurance Company and its Agent Transition Severance Plan (collectively Allstate), see Flanagan v. Allstate Insurance Co., 223 F.R.D. 489 (N.D.Ill.2004), the court granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion to reconsider, Flanagan v. Allstate Insurance Co., 225 F.R.D. 569 (N.D.Ill. 2004). We ordered plaintiffs to revise their class definition to address defendants’ concern about a fail-safe class. Id. at 573-74. In response to our memorandum order and opinion, plaintiffs proposed an amended class definition on December 8, 2004, reading as follows:

Allstate employee-agents who retired, terminated, or converted to independent contractor status between April 1, 1998 and May 31, 1999, who had not submitted notice of their retirement or resignation prior to April 1, 1998 and who retired, terminated ' or converted due to Defendants’ changes in work rules including increased service availability standards which required keeping agency offices open six days per week and having a licensed property and casualty representative in the office during all hours of operation and extended office hours; reduction or freezing of the amount of employee-agents’ reimbursable office expenses; unrealistic expectations and quotas as to contacts and sales; burdensome and unnecessary reporting requirements; and required attendance at meetings and training sessions of little or no utility.

Defendants subsequently filed an opposition to this amended definition or, in the alternative, a motion to strike, arguing that it suffered from the same deficiencies as the original definition. According to defendants, under the new definition class membership was still contingent on defendants’ liability— instead of class members being former employees who were “harassed” by defendants, they were now former employees subjected to “burdensome and unnecessary” and “unrealistic” policies and meetings with “little or no utility.” Defendants argued that given this definition, the class was still fail-safe and did not allow potential class members nor Allstate to identify actual members.

Plaintiffs responded by proposing a new amended definition:

Allstate employee-agents who retired, terminated, or converted to independent contractor status between April 1, 1998 and May 31, 1999, who had not submitted notice of their retirement or resignation prior to April 1, 1998 and who retired, terminated or converted due to Defendants’ changes in work rules set forth in the “Allstate Agency Standards” of September 1998 or subsequent versions of the “Allstate Agency Standards.”

Defendants acknowledge that this definition addresses some of its concerns, but maintain that neither putative class members nor counsel, nor the court, can easily ascertain class membership under this definition. They contend that since class membership hinges on whether employee-agents retired, terminated or converted due to changes in agency standards, membership cannot be determined until after an individual inquiry into each agent’s employment decision.

In our memorandum order and opinion granting class certification, we recognized that some Allstate employees may have retired, terminated, or converted to independent contractors dining the period in question, regardless of the company’s new policies. Flanagan, 223 F.R.D. at 498. For this reason we found that not all employee-agents who left would “automatically become eligible class members.” Id. Citing Romasanta v. United Air Lines, Inc., 717 F.2d 1140 (7th Cir.1983), we sug[619]*619gested that individual hearings could resolve this issue and determine whether potential class members were actual class members. Defendants have objected to the need for individualized determinations of class membership, arguing that class membership should be determinable from objective criteria. A slight amendment of plaintiffs’ latest class definition will resolve defendants’ concern regarding class membership. If the class is defined as all employee-agents, who were subject to certain changes in the work rules and who retired, terminated, or converted between April 1, 1998, and May 31, 1999, no inquiry into putative class members’ motives is needed in order to determine class membership. Any concerns that some members of this class retired or terminated, not because of the new work rules, but due to other circumstances, can be addressed, if necessary, after a determination of defendants’ liability.

This new definition forces us to revisit our analysis for class certification under Rule 23(b). While we certified plaintiffs’ original class under Rule 23(b)(2), that section no longer applies to this class. Nonetheless, class certification is still proper under Rule 23(b)(3). Under Rule 23(b)(2), a class action is maintainable where “the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds generally applicable to the class, thereby making appropriate final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief with respect to the class as a whole.” When the class was defined as those who made an employment decision due to defendants’ actions, injunctive or declaratory relief was appropriate because it would have applied to all class members. Monetary relief that class members would have received, if defendants were found liable, would have been “incidental” because it would have flowed from the injunctive relief — inclusion in the Agent Transition Severance Plan. See Lemon v. International Union of Operating Engineers, Local No. 139, 216 F.3d 577, 581 (7th Cir. 2000). All class members would have been entitled to monetary damages, which could have been calculated based on objective standards stemming from Allstate’s employee benefits program. See Barabin v. Aramark Corp., 2003 WL 355417 at *1, 2003 U.S.App. LEXIS 3532 at *5 (3d Cir.2003). The same cannot be said for the newly-defined class. All class members will not be automatically entitled to relief. As mentioned above, after a determination regarding defendants’ liability, individualized determinations regarding class members’ damages will need to be made. Regardless, a plaintiff class need only satisfy one subsection of Rule 23(b) to be certified and this newly-defined class satisfies Rule 23(b)(3).

Rule 23(b)(3) requires (1) that common questions of law or fact predominate over those that apply only to individual class members, and (2) that a class action be the superior method of adjudicating the case. Courts have noted a “considerable overlap” between a finding of commonality under Rule 23(a) and a finding of predominance, see Ludwig v. Pilkington North America, Inc., 2003 WL 22478842 at *4 (N.D.Ill.2003), such that “a finding of commonality will likely satisfy a finding of predomination.” Mejdreck v. Lockformer Co., 2002 WL 1838141 at *6 (N.D.Ill.2002)(citing Heastie v. Community Bank of Greater Peoria, 125 F.R.D. 669, 677 (N.D.Ill.1989)). As discussed in our earlier memorandum opinion and order granting class certification, plaintiffs’ § 510 claim creates a common question for all class members because it alleges that defendants harassed plaintiffs through agency-wide directives, which were applied to all employee-agents.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
228 F.R.D. 617, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10701, 2005 WL 497800, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/flanagan-v-allstate-insurance-ilnd-2005.