United States Second Circuit

In an appeal concerning Nassau County Correctional Center's blanket strip search policy for newly admitted, misdemeanor detainees, denials of plaintiffs' repeated class certification motions for lack of common issue predominance are reversed as: 1) district courts may certify a class on a particular issue regardless of whether plaintiffs' claims, as a whole, satisfy the predominance test; 2) the district court erred when it excised common liability issues from its predominance analysis; and, as a result, 3) the district court exceeded its discretion in declining to certify a class on the issue of liability pursuant to Rules 23(b)(3) and (c)(4)(A), Fed. R. Civ. P.

Appellate Information

• Decided 08/24/2006
• Published 08/24/2006

Judges

• STRAUB, Circuit Judge., Before:  CABRANES, STRAUB, and HALL, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Second Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Robert L. Herbst, Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP (Vera M. Scanlon, Spencer B. Freedman, on the brief), New York, NY, for Plaintiffs-Appellants., Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, New York, NY, for Plaintiffs-Appellants., Jeffrey G. Smith, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, LLP, New York, NY, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• Dennis J. Saffran, Deputy County Attorney (Lorna B. Goodman, County Attorney of Nassau County, David B. Goldin, Deputy County Attorney, on the brief), Mineola, NY, for Defendants-Appellees.