Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, a Japanese Corporation, et al. v. Painters and Allied Trades District Council 82 Health Care Fund, et al.

This case involves a multibillion-dollar civil RICO class action covering tens of thousands of third-party payors that reimbursed millions of prescriptions for hundreds of thousands of patients over a ten-year period. As both the district court and the court of appeals admitted, an unknown number of class members were never harmed—by the class’s own telling, at least thousands of them. Nevertheless, the Ninth Circuit blessed this sprawling Rule 23(b)(3) class, reaffirming its outlier view that classes with an untold number of unharmed members may be certified, even if the plaintiffs offer no plan for figuring out which class members are properly before the court. In so holding, the court entrenched an acknowledged circuit split on which this Court has twice granted certiorari but has yet to resolve. The Ninth Circuit then made matters even worse, permitting the use of representative evidence to paper over the fundamentally individualized nature of the class claims in a holding that defies this Court’s teachings and splits with decisions of other circuits that faithfully follow them. The questions presented are:

1. Whether a federal court may certify a class action pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) when some members of the proposed class lack any compensable injury in fact.

2. Whether a federal court may certify a class action pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) when a class relies on representative evidence to try to prove an individualized reliance issue that is a necessary element of each plaintiff’s claim.