Ferrara v. 21st Century N. Am. Ins. Co.
Ferrara v. 21st Century N. Am. Ins. Co.
Opinion of the Court
¶ 1 Appellant Cynthia Ferrara seeks review of the trial court's denial of her motion for class certification made pursuant to Rule 23, Ariz. R. Civ. P. Finding no abuse of discretion, we affirm.
Factual and Procedural Background
¶ 2 Ferrara was injured in an auto accident in the course of her employment. As of the date of the accident, she was a covered person and beneficiary of an auto insurance policy provided by the defendant/appellee 21st Century North America Insurance Company. As a result of her injuries, Ferrara incurred $3,981.59 in medical bills. She was eligible to receive, and in fact did receive workers' compensation benefits covering those expenses, though her employer's workers' compensation carrier was able to pay off the treatment costs at a reduced rate of $2,053.91.
¶ 3 Following a $6,812.59 settlement on her third-party claim against the responsible driver, Ferrara's workers' compensation carrier issued a lien on, and was repaid $2,053.91 from, her third-party settlement, pursuant to A.R.S. § 23-1023(D). Ferrara subsequently submitted the medical bills she had incurred to 21st Century, along with documents establishing that she had reimbursed the workers' compensation carrier, seeking coverage pursuant to the medical payments ("medpay") provision of her policy in the amount of $3,981.59.
¶ 4 21st Century denied her claim, citing an exclusion in the policy which the parties agree states: "We do not provide Medical Payments Coverage for any insured for bodily injury ... [o]ccurring during the course of employment if workers' compensation benefits are required or available for the bodily injury ."
¶ 5 Ferrara subsequently filed the instant action for breach of contract and declaratory relief,
Discussion
¶ 6 Plaintiffs seeking class certification must meet all the requirements of Rule 23(a) and at least one of the requirements of Rule 23(b). "One seeking to maintain a class action has the burden of showing that the prerequisites are satisfied-merely calling it a class action does not make it one." Carpinteiro v. Tucson Sch. Dist. No. 1 ,
¶ 7 Rule 23(a), Ariz. R. Civ. P., requires a party seeking certification to prove:
(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable;
(2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class;
(3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and
(4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.
These four requirements; numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy, "effectively limit the class claims to those fairly encompassed by the named plaintiff's claims." Dukes ,
¶ 8 "There is no bright line rule regarding the number of class members that will satisfy the numerosity prerequisite of [R]ule 23." London v. Green Acres Tr. ,
¶ 9 "The commonality and typicality requirements of Rule 23(a) tend to merge." Falcon ,
¶ 10 We have said that commonality "requires simply that there exist questions of law or fact common to the class." Lennon v. First Nat'l Bank of Ariz. ,
What matters to class certification ... is not the raising of common "questions"-even in droves-but, rather the capacity of a classwide proceeding to generate common answers apt to drive the resolution of the litigation. Dissimilarities within the proposed class are what have the potential to impede the generation of common answers.
Dukes ,
¶ 11 A trial court's "rigorous analysis" of whether the requirements of Rule 23(a) has been satisfied will "frequently ... entail some overlap with the merits of the plaintiff's underlying claim. That cannot be helped." Dukes ,
¶ 12 In this case, proof of numerosity, commonality, and typicality necessarily overlap with Ferrara's contention that 21st Century's denial of medpay claims pursuant to the exclusion "constitute[s] a material breach of the parties' contractual agreements and the covenant of good faith and fair dealing implied in each, and ... the Class ha[s] been damaged as a result." This is so because of the broad geographical scope of Ferrara's purported class, encompassing thirty-three states.
¶ 13 "Although there is no categorical bar to class treatment where the law of multiple states will apply, courts have expressed some skepticism of such treatment, particularly in substantive areas where the content of state law tends to differ." Sacred Health Heart Sys., Inc. v. Humana Military Healthcare Servs., Inc. ,
¶ 14 Ferrara included in her motion for class certification two matrices addressing the laws of the various states: the first providing each state's statutory basis for a workers' compensation carrier's right to reimbursement from third-party-at-fault recoveries; the second providing case law from each state regarding the interpretation of insurance contracts. In its response opposing certification, 21st Century provided its own matrix addressing the laws of the various states, which pointed out variances in the states' laws regarding the admissibility and application of extrinsic evidence in issues of contractual ambiguity and the rights of an insurer to seek medpay reimbursement/subrogation from third-party-at-fault recoveries. This matrix showed that of the thirty-three states in Ferrara's proposed geographic scope, the laws of twenty-seven appear to differ substantively from Arizona on whether an insurer has a right to recover medpay benefits from a third-party-at-fault recovery. Ferrara did not meaningfully address these variances, except to say that "such individual *1176issues do not defeat certification where the core issue is common" and that 21st Century failed to explain "how Defendant's subrogation rights would absolve it from or be a defense to the obligation to pay medpay benefits to the insured."
¶ 15 Additionally, after extensive discovery, which included the retention of an independent information technology expert to aide in reviewing 21st Century's claim logs, Ferrara was able to identify only thirty to forty potential claimants. However, as the trial court noted in its ruling, after excluding potential class members with their own individual litigation pending, who have settled or released their claims, or had their claims denied on statutory grounds applicable in their states, Ferrara "identified, at most , 20 potential class members," with Ferrara the sole potential member from Arizona.
Conclusion
¶ 16 We are persuaded that in the instant case, a confluence of factors, including the potentially small number of class members and the variances in state law on a core issue, could create issues sufficient to preclude class certification on the grounds of numerosity, commonality, and typicality. As it is the plaintiff's burden to demonstrate both "that there are in fact sufficiently numerous parties, common questions of law or fact," Dukes ,
Ferrara's second amended complaint contained an additional allegation of insurance bad faith, but noted in her motion for class certification that she was pursuing this count as an individual claim only.
"Because Rule 23 [of the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure] is identical to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we view federal cases construing the federal rule as authoritative." ESI Ergonomic Sols., LLC v. United Artists Theatre Circuit, Inc. ,
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.