## Facts

- Federal asbestos cases were centralized in multidistrict litigation in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
- Plaintiffs’ counsel and asbestos manufacturers (members of the Center for Claims Resolution) negotiated a proposed global settlement to resolve current and future asbestos-related claims.
- The parties filed a class complaint, answer, settlement agreement, and joint motion for conditional certification, intending settlement rather than litigation.
- The proposed Rule 23(b)(3) class included persons exposed to asbestos attributable to defendants who had not previously sued, including both presently injured claimants and “exposure-only” individuals without manifested disease.
- The settlement created an administrative claims process with scheduled payments by disease category, annual caps on payable claims, and no inflation adjustment.
- The settlement barred or limited certain categories of recovery (e.g., loss of consortium, certain emotional distress and enhanced-risk claims, medical monitoring, and pleural-plaque-only claims), even where state law might allow them.

## Issues

1. Whether a court may relax Rule 23 class-certification requirements when certification is sought solely to implement a settlement.
2. Whether the proposed settlement-only asbestos class satisfied Rule 23(a), including adequacy of representation, and Rule 23(b)(3), including predominance and superiority.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment requiring decertification of the class.
- Settlement-only classes are permissible, and settlement may affect the Rule 23(b)(3) manageability inquiry, but all other Rule 23 requirements apply with undiminished scrutiny.
- The class failed Rule 23(b)(3) predominance because individualized issues (injury status, exposure, causation, and variations in state law) outweighed common questions.
- The class failed Rule 23(a)(4) adequacy because of serious conflicts between presently injured claimants seeking prompt, higher payments and exposure-only claimants concerned with preserving funds and future legal options.
- Opt-out rights and a general fairness finding did not cure the absence of structural protections (such as subclasses with separate representation) for divergent interests.

## Legal Principles

- Certification for settlement does not permit bypassing Rule 23’s structural protections for absent class members; only trial-manageability concerns may be reduced by settlement.
- Rule 23(b)(3) predominance is not met where individualized questions and differing state substantive laws overwhelm shared issues in a mass-tort settlement class.
- Adequacy of representation requires addressing intra-class conflicts through class structure and representation; aggregating present-injury and exposure-only claimants without separate safeguards can defeat adequacy.
- Rule 23 must be applied consistent with Article III limits and the Rules Enabling Act’s bar on procedural rules altering substantive rights.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a settlement-only class action must satisfy Rule 23’s requirements in full, and it rejected certification of a sweeping asbestos settlement class because common issues did not predominate and the class structure did not adequately protect exposure-only members against conflicts with currently injured claimants.


Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591 (1997)