rejecting class certification of those seeking relief for deceptive advertising campaign, where not all class members encountered advertisements and variations existed in advertisements that proposed class members did encounter
How later courts described this case
- rejecting class certification of those seeking relief for deceptive advertising campaign, where not all class members encountered advertisements and variations existed in advertisements that proposed class members did encounter
- precluding certification of class that extended to "everyone who purchased Listerine products during the advertising campaign, regardless whether a purchaser was exposed to the campaign”
- where class certification was reversed when individual proof would be required to determine whether a particular purchaser of Listerine was exposed to deceptive advertising that affected the decision to purchase the product as the advertising was not uniform during the class period
- “a certification that fails under c. 93A would fail under the requirements of rule 23 as well”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Brown, J.
(concurring). I fully agree with the carefully crafted *303 majority opinion. However, I have much less difficulty concluding that the certification of the class here was improper. The interests of the various potential plaintiffs are so dissimilar that I am puzzled why these plaintiffs’ counsel have diverted their efforts away from a problematic case to an extremely difficult one that attempts to encompass the much larger universe of a class action.
An attorney’s paramount interest is that of his or her client. See Mass.R.Prof.C. 1.7, as amended, 430 Mass. 1301 (1999). This familiar standard has, of course, been expressed in different ways over the past two millennia, from the Bible, see Matthew 6:24 (“No man can serve two masters”), to the quaint old proverb that “you dance with the one who brought you.”