On March 27, 2013, in a narrow 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded a Third Circuit decision upholding the class-action certification in a lawsuit accusing Comcast Corp. of unlawfully monopolizing the Philadelphia cable market.

The Court’s decision to reverse the appellate court ruling hinged on the methodology the Third Circuit used in calculating damages – namely, that the decision to certify the class had impermissibly ignored expert testimony and wrongfully added damage amounts related to claims that had been dismissed.  Justice Scalia opined, “The [lower courts] saw no need for respondents to ‘tie each theory of antitrust impact’ to a calculation of damages.  That, they said, would involve consideration of the ‘merits’ having ‘no place in the class certification inquiry.’ . . .  That reasoning flatly contradicts our cases requiring a determination that Rule 23 is satisfied, even when that requires inquiry into the merits of the claim.”  Later, Scalia warned that allowing any method of damage calculation, so long as it applied class-wide, would “reduce Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement to a nullity.”

The dissent disagreed with the majority’s interpretation, believing that the purpose of Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance requirement was to show class cohesiveness on questions of law or fact – in other words, the plaintiffs were not required to demonstrate “commonality as to all questions.”

Counsel for the plaintiff’s expressed their disagreement with the decision, but commented, “We look forward to satisfying the court’s narrow methodological concerns on remand to the trail court and to trying the case on the merits as soon as practicable.”

Supreme Court issues narrow ruling in antitrust class action case