Quinn Emanuel Obtains Landmark En Banc Opinion Setting Important Class Action Precedent

In a closely watched decision, Quinn Emanuel recently won a groundbreaking class certification victory in Speerly v. General Motors, LLC, No. 23-1940 (6th Cir. June 27, 2025).  In a 9-7 en banc decision, the Sixth Circuit vacated the district court’s certification of 26 state-wide subclasses involving approximately 800,000 individual car buyers and 59 state-law claims arising from alleged automatic transmission defects in GM cars.  The Court’s detailed analysis of the commonality and predominance requirements for class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 sets important precedent that will inform class certification practice throughout the United States. 

Class Certification Under Federal Rule 23

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 provides an avenue for individual plaintiffs to litigate claims on behalf of classes of unnamed individuals who are similarly situated.  In deciding whether to certify a class, the trial court must evaluate whether the putative class meets all of Rule 23’s requirements.  Given the exponential impact a class action can have on a defendant’s exposure as compared to a suit by an individual, certification is a critical, often dispositive stage of litigation.

For a class to be certified, Rule 23 requires that the class be “so numerous” that joinder of all the individual plaintiffs is impracticable; it must involve “questions of law or fact common to the class;” the claims or defenses of the class representatives must be “typical of the claims or defenses of the class;” and the trial court must find that the class representatives “will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.”  Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a).  In addition, a putative class must also satisfy at least one of the requirements set out in Rule 23(b).  The relevant Rule 23(b) requirement in the Speerly decision was predominance, namely, that “the court finds that the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.”  Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3).

The Speerly decision focused on commonality and predominance, which involves “address[ing] issues that overlap with the merits inquiry.”  Speerly at 9.  Accordingly, where merits questions regarding a plaintiff’s claims bear on commonality and predominance, a district court will need to assess those issues to some extent at the class certification stage.  Id.

Factual Background of the Speerly Case

Starting in 2015, General Motors (“GM”) sold cars that utilized eight-gear Hydra-Matic transmissions, commonly referred to as “8Ls.”  In 2019, individual car purchasers sued GM on behalf of a putative class, alleging the transmissions were defective. 

The plaintiffs alleged two separate defects:  an issue with the transmission fluid that led to vibrations akin to driving over rough pavement when the fluid was exposed to moisture; and an issue when changing gears that led to consumers experiencing a range of effects, from nothing at all, to hesitation when first shifting from park into drive, to the car jerking as it shifted gears.  Beginning in December 2018, GM began providing dealers with a replacement fluid to flush the transmission of cars whose owners had reported the first issue, and most such customers never again complained about the issue.

The plaintiffs—from 32 states—asserted 104 claims against GM for breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty, violation of state consumer protection statutes, and fraudulent omission.  The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan certified a class composed of 26 statewide subclasses representing roughly 800,000 people in total.  That class included class members who had never experienced either of the alleged defects. 

With respect to commonality, the district court ruled that the commonality standard was not demanding, and was satisfied because all plaintiffs asserted some form of warranty and consumer fraud claims, and all of those claims demand proof of a defect in the vehicles’ transmission design.  As for predominance, the district court ruled that the class had established predominance because three common questions were central to the causes of action in each jurisdiction:  (1) whether the transmission design had one or more defects that rendered the vehicles unsuitable for the ordinary use of providing safe and reliable transportation, (2) whether GM knew about the defects and concealed its knowledge, and (3) whether the information withheld would have been material to a reasonable buyer.  The district court found that these issues were each amenable to proof by common evidence on a class-wide basis, and that the answers to each would feature predominantly in the case’s disposition.

Appeal to Sixth Circuit and En Banc Opinion

GM, represented by Quinn Emanuel, appealed the district court’s certification order.  After a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit initially affirmed, GM petitioned for rehearing en banc, which was granted.  On June 27, 2025, the Sixth Circuit’s en banc panel reversed the district court and the original Sixth Circuit opinion, vacated class certification, and remanded to the district court to reassess certification. 

Commonality

The Sixth Circuit found that the district court had erred in finding that commonality was satisfied because three common questions—whether the transmissions had defects; whether GM knew about them; and whether the defects were material—“len[t] themselves to a common answer and featured prominently in the disposition of the case.”  Id. at 11 (citation and quotation marks omitted) (quoting district court).  As the Sixth Circuit explained in reversing this finding, “that does not suffice.  A court may not simply ask whether generalized questions yield a common answer.  That would undermine the bedrock principle that courts must identify common questions with respect to concrete elements of each claim.  By hitching all 59 claims to a question about ‘defect’ in the abstract, the [district] court overlooked how significant differences across each cause of action raise serious commonality concerns.”  Id.  Indeed, whereas the district court had pointed to “defect” as a common issue, the Sixth Circuit noted that “defect” means different things in connection with different causes of action.  And the 59 claims at issue in Speerly implicated different definitions of “defect.”  Speerly at 13-14.

The Sixth Circuit further explained that “a court might find that the element of breach in an express-warranty claim asks a common question:  Does a problem exist in each transmission that GM promised to fix?  But the element of breach in an implied-warranty claim asks a different question:  Does a problem in each transmission amount to a defect that makes the car unfit for its ordinary purpose?”  Speerly at 11-12 (emphasis added).  The court concluded that the latter may not be common among the class, since some class members did not experience one or both of the alleged defects, and experienced different effects of the same alleged defect.  Similarly, the court explained that the element of GM’s “knowledge” differed between claims.  As a result, “without an element-by-element commonality analysis,” the court could not “effectively review which questions are truly central to which claims”; the Sixth Circuit and vacated and remanded for the district court to conduct “an element-by-element analysis that assesses how each question is common by fitting it into each claim.”  Speerly at 12. 

Predominance

The predominance analysis “requires a district court to make a claim-by-claim comparison” of common and non-common questions to see which, if any, predominate.  Speerly at 14.  As the majority put it, “[a] subclass with highly individualized issues may not ride the coattails of another subclass without them.”  Id. at 17.  “An element-by-element comparison of a cause of action to determine whether common questions do, or do not, predominate requires a consideration of all of the elements of each legal claim at the outset.  Any other approach does not come to grips with the central point of the predominance inquiry and subverts the fairness and efficiency considerations underlying Rule 23.”  Id. at 20 (emphasis in original). 

The Fifth Circuit in Speedy explained that whereas benefits to class members of certification are generally small, the consequences to a defendant can be catastrophic, so much so that class actions where a class is certified almost always resolve through settlement rather than trial on the merits.  This means that class certification is “too often the main event” in a class action.  Id. at 20 (citation and quotation marks omitted).  The court also noted that improper certification of a class creates a situation in which defendants enter into costly settlements rather than betting the company on the uncertainties of trial, the costs of which then raise the cost of doing business, which is in turn passed on to consumers, investors, and workers.  Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).  The court explained that the predominance analysis avoids these risks “by focusing on whether the class action would lead to a fair and efficient trial, not a settlement.”  Id.

The court then walked through each of the four types of causes of action at issue, analyzing whether any common questions predominated for each:

• Breach of Express Warranty: The court rejected the lower court’s predominance finding as to plaintiffs’ express warranty claims.  The question of breach “overwhelm[ed]” any efficiency gains of common questions, as GM could only be said to have “breached” the contracts at issue if and when it refused or failed to repair the customer’s car.  That is a highly individualized inquiry—individual class members will necessarily differ as to whether they brought their cars in for repair at all, if they did so during or after the warranty period, what types of repairs they received, and what effect the repairs had.  “All of this means that the substance or quantity of evidence offered varies among unnamed class members.  That is a problem.”  at 18 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
• Breach of Implied Warranty: The Court also rejected the district court’s predominance finding for the implied warranty claims, as the alleged defects presented differently to different class members and to different degrees, and did not present to some class members at all.  The Court noted that “[s]uch variations make it difficult to conclude that the common questions predominate.”  at 21. 
• Consumer Protection Statutory Claims: With respect to consumer protection claims, the Court noted that some of the states at issue required that a defect manifest before the consumer could sue, whereas others did not.  Similarly, some states required a consumer to show actual reliance on a merchant’s misrepresentation or omission, whereas others did not.  Both inquiries are highly individualized to each class member and not conducive to finding predominance. 
• Fraudulent Concealment: Similarly, the court stated that it did not appear that any of the five state subclasses involving fraudulent concealment claims had common questions that predominated over individualized ones, as the claim under each state’s laws requires reliance, which is a highly individualized showing. 

Implications of the Speerly Decision for Class Action Practice

Beyond Speerly itself, the Sixth Circuit’s en banc opinion has broader implications for class action practitioners, both in the Sixth Circuit (which includes Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee) and beyond.  It is one of the most comprehensive circuit court opinions discussing Rule 23 and class certification in recent years, and its analysis of commonality and predominance is sure to feature prominently in class certification briefing throughout the United States going forward. 

A district court in Montana has already relied on Speerly extensively in denying certification of a class in Nelson v. Forest River, Inc.  No. CV-22-49-GF-BMM, 2025 WL 2197262 (D. Mont. Aug. 1, 2025).  And the Seventh Circuit recently cited Speerly’s “reasoning that a court can only assess commonality and predominance after ‘identifying the relevant elements of each cause of action’” in its opinion reversing certification of a class action brought by car owners against insurers.  Schroeder v. Progressive Paloverde Ins. Co., No. 24-1559, 2025 WL 2083855, at *4 (7th Cir. July 24, 2025).

And although Speerly did not turn on the issue of standing, the Court’s discussion of class member standing (as well as Judge Nalbandian’s concurrence, which discusses standing at length) nonetheless provides important guidance on the issue.  For example, the Sixth Circuit in Tapply v. Whirlpool Corp. recently cited to Speerly’s consideration of whether named plaintiffs in a consumer class action had suffered a concrete injury-in-fact, and its conclusion that when a consumer buys a defective product and the defect manifests, the consumer has suffered a concrete injury-in-fact, in support of the Tapply court’s finding that the Tapply plaintiffs had Article III standing.  Tapply v. Whirlpool Corp., No. 23-1666, 2025 WL 2237654, at *3 (6th Cir. Aug. 6, 2025); see also Pacheco v. Ford Motor Co., No. 2:22-CV-11927, 2025 WL 2255623, at *4 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 7, 2025) (citing both the Speerly majority’s and Judge Nalbandian’s concurrence’s discussion of standing in finding that at the pleading stage, plaintiffs had plausibly pleaded injury-in-fact for standing purposes).

In short, Speerly contains important guidance for class action practitioners, both in the Sixth Circuit and around the country.