No. 15-172 In the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ____________________________ EQUIFAX INFORMATION SERVICES, LLC, Defendant-Petitioner, v. DONNA K. SOUTTER, for herself and on behalf of all similarly situated individuals Plaintiff-Respondent. ____________________________ On Appeal from United States District Court for the! Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division, No. 3:10-cv-107-REP ANSWER IN OPPOSITION TO PETITION FOR INTERLOCUTORY APPEAL UNDER FEDERAL RULE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 23(f) Leonard A. Bennett Deepak Gupta Matthew J. Erausquin Jonathan E. Taylor Casey S. Nash GUPTA BECK PLLC Susan M. Rotkis 1735 20th Street, NW CONSUMER LITIGATION Washington, DC 20009 ASSOCIATES, P.C. (202) 888-1741 763 J. Clyde Morris Boulevard Newport News, VA 23601 (757) 930-3660 Dale W. Pittman LAW OFFICE OF DALE W. PITTMAN, P.C. 112-A W. Tabb Street Petersburg, VA 23803 (804) 861-6000 Counsel for Plaintiff-Respondent TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Authorities .................................................................................................. ii Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 Questions presented .................................................................................................. 3 Background ............................................................................................................... 4 Rule 23(f) standards ................................................................................................ 11 Argument ................................................................................................................ 12 I. The district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that class members may be readily identified using Equifax’s own records. .......... 12 II. The district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that common issues predominate and that a class action would be superior to other methods of adjudication. ............................................. 17 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 20 i TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Cases Byrd v. Aaron’s Inc., — F.3d —, 2015 WL 1727613 (3d Cir. Apr. 16, 2015) ............................... 15, 17 Carrera v. Bayer Corp., 727 F.3d 300 (3d Cir. 2013) ................................................................................ 17 Comcast v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1426 (2013) ........................................................................................ 19 Dalton v. Capital Associated Industries, Inc., 257 F.3d 409 (4th Cir. 2001) ................................................................................. 4 Ealy v. Pinkerton Government Services, 514 F. App’x 299 (4th Cir. 2013) ........................................................................ 19 EQT Production Co. v. Adair, 764 F.3d 347 (4th Cir. 2014) ............................................................... 1, 12, 13, 16 Lienhart v. Dryvit Systems, Inc., 255 F.3d 138 (4th Cir. 2001) ..................................................................... 1, 11, 12 Murray v. GMAC Mortgage Corp., 434 F.3d 948 (7th Cir. 2006) ............................................................................... 20 Prado-Steiman v. Bush, 221 F.3d 1266 (11th Cir. 2000) ........................................................................... 11 Safeco Insurance Co. v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47 (2007) ................................................................................................ 4 Soutter v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, 2011 WL 1226025 (E.D. Va. Mar. 30, 2011) ................................................... 6, 7 Soutter v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, 498 F. App’x 260 (4th Cir. 2012) .................................................................... 9, 19 Stillmock v. Weis Markets, Inc., 385 F. App’x 267 (4th Cir. 2010) .................................................................. passim ii Young v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., 693 F.3d 532 (6th Cir. 2012) ............................................................................... 15 Statutes 15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b) ............................................................................................. 4, 5 Rules Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(b) ................................................................... 18 Treatises McLaughlin on Class Actions (11th ed.) ........................................................................ 15 iii INTRODUCTION Invoking Rule 23(f), Equifax urges this Court to grant interlocutory review of a class-certification order in a quintessential consumer class action: a case alleging that a credit-reporting agency’s uniform failure to correctly report a single type of information from a single type of source in a single state—after learning that the information was false—violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But this Court makes only “careful and sparing use of Rule 23(f),” recognizing the Court’s “limited capacity” for “interlocutory appeals” and the district court’s “institutional advantage” in “managing the course of litigation.” Lienhart v. Dryvit Sys., Inc., 255 F.3d 138, 145 (4th Cir. 2001). In a case like this one, in which the petition rests almost entirely on factbound claims that the certification order is “manifestly erroneous,” the petitioner must show that the order is not just wrong, but “extreme,” and thus “face[s] certain decertification on appeal.” Id. Equifax comes nowhere near that high bar. If ever there were a decision that turned on the district court’s managerial responsibilities, it is this one. Equifax contends that the court misapplied EQT Production Co. v. Adair, 764 F.3d 347, 358 (4th Cir. 2014), which reaffirmed that class members must be “readily identifiable.” But Adair made clear that this requirement is satisfied when the defendant’s own records may be used to identify each class member and the defendant does not contest their accuracy—precisely the situation here. Although Equifax objects that 1 this process will involve some manual review, the circuits have uniformly held that this is insufficient to deny certification. And the district court found that any such review could be completed “by a handful of attorneys in a matter of days.” Op. 18. Equifax also raises predominance and superiority objections that this Court squarely rejected in Stillmock v. Weis Markets, Inc., 385 F. App’x 267 (4th Cir. 2010). Hoping to obscure these defects, Equifax looks back to an earlier appeal, claiming that “many of the same issues that previously precluded certification remain unaddressed.” Pet. 9. But Equifax did not even argue ascertainability there, and this case has been fundamentally transformed since then: The class has shrunk from 300,000 to 1,000 people. And, as the district court emphasized at the outset of its 85-page opinion, “Soutter has established on remand that certain material representations made by Equifax in its briefs”—including briefs to this Court— “were, in fact, untrue.” Op. 3. Those representations weren’t peripheral; they created “an inaccurate record” on central, “legally determinative” points. Id. at 7. The shifting factual moorings of Equifax’s defense strategy highlight the dangers inherent in interlocutory review of a district judge’s management of a class action. It is the district court, not this Court, that is in the best position to assess the truth of the parties’ factual representations. This time, this Court should stay its hand and let the district court manage the litigation as it unfolds, reserving any appeal for when it is usually taken: after final judgment. 2 QUESTIONS PRESENTED 1. Ascertainability. Should this Court grant an interlocutory appeal to consider whether the district court manifestly abused its discretion in determining that approximately 1,000 class members could be easily identified using a state- court database and Equifax’s own computer records—a ministerial task that the court found could be completed by “a handful of attorneys in a matter of days”? 2. Predominance. Should this Court grant an interlocutory appeal to consider whether the district court manifestly abused its discretion in following this Court’s unanimous decision in Stillmock v. Weis Markets, Inc., 385 F. App’x 267 (4th Cir. 2010), and concluding that the two “most qualitatively significant question[s]”—the reasonableness of Equifax’s uniform procedures and the willfulness of its uniform failure to correct inaccurate information after receiving notice—were common and predominated over the mechanical determination of statutory damages, which “is simply a matter of counting heads and data points”? 3. Superiority. Should this Court grant an interlocutory appeal to consider whether the district court manifestly abused its discretion in rejecting Equifax’s argument that the availability of statutory damages and attorney’s fees under the FCRA renders a class action necessarily inferior—the same per se rule this Court unanimously rejected in Stillmock (and that no circuit has adopted)? 3 BACKGROUND 1. The Fair Credit Reporting Act. “Congress enacted FCRA in 1970 out of concerns about abuses in the consumer reporting industry.” Dalton v. Capital Associated Indus., Inc., 257 F.3d 409, 414 (4th Cir. 2001). “Congress found that in too many instances [consumer-reporting] agencies were reporting inaccurate information” about consumers, often to devastating effect. Id. The FCRA thus contains “a