In Re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation

Background

Plaintiffs brought a putative class action against Pacific Fertility Center, Prelude Fertility, Inc., Chart Industries, and later Pacific Fertility MSO, LLC. They asserted state-law claims and invoked the Class Action Fairness Act. The dispute arose from the March 4, 2018 failure of Tank 4, which stored eggs and embryos. Staff found that the tank was severely distorted and had a very low liquid-nitrogen level. The tank held reproductive material belonging to 608 Pacific Fertility customers, and the opinion states that the affected material had lower-than-historical embryo survival rates and faced additional risks.

Chart designed, manufactured, and sold Tank 4. The opinion states that Chart knew of prior vacuum failures involving its products and knew of issues with the tank’s controller. Before the incident, Pacific MSO staff had disabled the controller because it produced erroneous alarms and did not properly record liquid-nitrogen levels. Staff had also noted that the tank needed to be replaced and manually monitored and refilled it while preparing a spare tank.

Pacific Fertility’s claims were compelled to arbitration. The Ninth Circuit later reversed the district court’s order denying Prelude and Pacific MSO’s motion to compel arbitration. As a result, Chart was the only defendant whose claims were proceeding in the district court rather than in arbitration when the court decided the class-certification motion.

Proposed Class and Rule 23 Analysis

Plaintiffs ultimately clarified that they sought issue certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(4), limited to general causation on their strict-products-liability and negligent-failure-to-recall claims against Chart. Under their proposal, a jury would decide whether Tank 4 was defective and whether the defect could cause injury to reproductive material stored in the tank during the March 4 incident. Specific causation, compensatory damages, and punitive damages would remain for individual proceedings if general causation were decided for the class.

The court held that the proposed class satisfied Rule 23(a). It found numerosity because the class included approximately 600 people whose eggs or embryos were stored in Tank 4, not counting reproductive partners. It found commonality because questions about whether Chart designed or manufactured a defective system, knew about the defect, and acted timely on that knowledge applied to all class members. It found typicality because the claims arose from the same incident and alleged course of conduct, and differences in individual injuries and damages did not defeat typicality for the proposed general-causation issue. It also found adequacy because Chart identified no fundamental conflict between the named plaintiffs and other class members.

The court then considered Rule 23(b)(3), which requires common questions to predominate and a class action to be superior to other available methods. The court found that predominance was easily satisfied for the proposed general-causation issues. The questions included whether Tank 4 was defective, whether the defect caused the incident, whether the incident could damage the stored reproductive material, and whether Chart knew of the defect and negligently failed to recall the tank.

Ruling

The court concluded that superiority and judicial economy were not satisfied. It reasoned that individual trials would likely repeat much of the evidence presented in a general-causation trial, including evidence about how the tank operated, proper storage, temperature increases, earlier incidents, specific causation, punitive damages, and what Chart knew and did. The court also noted that at least 71 plaintiffs had filed their own state-court actions and at least 125 had initiated arbitration against Pacific Fertility as of January 10, 2020. In the court’s view, class certification would provide little efficiency and could interfere with class members’ interests in individually pursuing private claims.

The court emphasized that the Ninth Circuit does not categorically bar class certification in products-liability cases. Nevertheless, because the proposed issue class would not produce sufficient efficiency and individual proceedings could be superior, the court exercised its discretion and denied Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The order states that it disposes of Docket Nos. 302, 350, 411, and 413, and its title identifies Chart’s motion to exclude expert testimony, but the provided text does not clearly state the exact disposition of that motion.