DANIEL v. BLUE SHIELD OF CALIFORNIA (2018)

MEMORANDUM **

Plaintiffs-Appellants Daniel F., Shan O., and Gregory F. appeal the district court's denial of class certification and denial of leave to file a renewed motion for class certification. The parties are familiar with the facts and proceedings, and we will not restate them here.

We doubt that the district court abused its discretion in denying class certification. Plaintiffs-Appellants failed to submit with their motion important deposition testimony upon which some of their central contentions depended, and their proposed class definition was plagued with uncertainty. Likewise, it seems that the district court appropriately declined to permit Plaintiffs-Appellants to file a renewed motion for class certification. It does not appear that the proposed renewed motion sufficiently cured the flaws that led the court to deny certification in the first instance.

But we cannot decide this appeal on the merits because it is moot. When a named plaintiff's individual claim becomes moot after class certification is denied, we sometimes permit that plaintiff to appeal the adverse class certification ruling, provided that he retains a stake in the appeal. See Campion v. Old Republic Prot. Co., Inc., 775 F.3d 1144, 1145-48 (9th Cir. 2014) (per curiam). This stake may be financial, or it may be a private-attorney-general-like interest in class certification. See id. On the particular facts presented here, we are not persuaded that Plaintiffs-Appellants retain a stake in the outcome of their appeal of the district court's order denying class certification. Accordingly, this appeal is DISMISSED as moot.