Amicus Brief: TransUnion LLC v Ramirez
In TransUnion v. Ramirez, the Court addressed questions about injury to class members. TransUnion argued that according to Rule 23, all class members must prove their injury. However, COSAL wrote this brief to support the notion that antitrust litigation would be compromised if plaintiffs had to prove injury to all class members before certifying the class. At this phase, information is likely unknown, and evidence of injury still must be proven later. Therefore, requiring proof of injury as a prerequisite to class certification would only impact class certification’s capabilities as a management tool. Moreover, TransUnion argued injury must be proven before certification so that uninjured members do not recover damages. However, the court has discretion to handle uninjured class members at a later time to ensure that does not unfairly occur. Furthermore Rule 23 requires that a named plaintiff is sufficiently typical of the class; however, the Petitioner claimed they were too good to represent the class in this case. That being said, typicality does not require a plaintiff have the exact same injury as the class because plaintiffs do not need to receive identical damages. As such, COSAL concluded that the court’s decision should be affirmed. Deborah Elman and Robert Kitchenoff authored this brief.
