California Court of Appeal

Order decertifying a class alleging violations of Penal Code section 632, which prohibits the undisclosed monitoring or recording of confidential telephone conversations, is affirmed, where: 1) the decertification order is not necessarily precluded by the certification-before-merits rule, as court's have discretion to decertify a class at any time if individual issues appear to dominate the case; 2) there remain significant individual issues regarding each plaintiff's reasonable expectations with respect to their communications being overheard or recorded; and 3) the court acted within its discretion in finding that the common questions paled in terms of factual complexity and scope when compared with the individual questions.

Appellate Information

• Decided 11/04/2014
• Published 11/04/2014

Judges

• Haller

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel