## Facts

- Steven J. Thorogood bought a Kenmore clothes dryer from Sears after seeing advertising describing the drum as “stainless steel.”
- The drum included some stainless-steel portions, but other portions were not stainless and could rust.
- Thorogood alleged the non-stainless parts rusted and stained his clothing.
- He claimed Sears’s “stainless steel” representation was deceptive because it implied all relevant interior metal surfaces were stainless.
- Thorogood sued under the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act and sought to represent a multistate class of approximately 500,000 purchasers across 29 states.

## Issues

1. Whether a multistate consumer-fraud class satisfied Rule 23(b)(3)’s predominance and superiority requirements.
2. Whether consumer understanding of “stainless steel,” purchase causation, and injury/damages could be shown with common proof rather than individualized inquiries.
3. Whether variations in the consumer-protection laws of 29 states made the proposed class action unmanageable and undermined predominance.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit accepted interlocutory review under Rule 23(f).
- The court reversed the class-certification order and vacated certification.
- The court held common issues did not predominate and a class action was not a superior method of adjudication.
- The case was remanded; any remaining claim could proceed only on an individual basis, not as the certified multistate class.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 23(b)(3) predominance is not met where liability depends on individualized consumer understanding of advertising language and whether it affected each purchase decision.
- In consumer-fraud cases, injury and damages must be shown for each claimant; they generally cannot be presumed across a large class where many members may have suffered no harm.
- CAFA jurisdiction does not relax Rule 23’s certification requirements.
- Material differences among multiple states’ consumer-protection laws can further defeat predominance and manageability for a multistate class, particularly absent a workable plan to handle those differences.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit vacated certification because determining deception, causation, and injury required buyer-by-buyer proof and the proposed multistate class also raised serious state-law variation and manageability problems, making Rule 23(b)(3) certification improper.


Thorogood v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 547 F.3d 742 (7th Cir. 2008)