No. 5-99-0830 IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ... - Appellate.net

of evidence State Farm would be entitled to introduce to defend itself with respect to those
individual claims. Instead, the court merely assumed that the proof for each class member
would be the same, accepting at face value plaintiffs’ representations that they would be able
to prove the “categorical[] inferior[ity]” of all non-OEM parts. A. 31. At the same time, the
court brushed aside the evidence State Farm had presented at the class certification hearing
concerning the tens of thousands of non-OEM parts involved and the significant variations
in quality among those parts, on the ground that such evidence went to “the merits of
whether non-OEM parts are equal to OEM parts.” A. 30-31.
If the circuit court had used the correct legal standard for judging predominance, the
only conclusion it could have reached was that individual issues of fact overwhelmed any
purported common question. If an insured were to bring an individual breach of contract
claim, he would have to prove (1) that State Farm specified a non-OEM repair part on his
repair estimate; (2) that a non-OEM part was actually installed on his vehicle or that he paid
extra to have an OEM part installed; (3) that the non-OEM part specified was incapable of
restoring the vehicle to its pre-loss condition; (4) that any failure in fact to restore the vehicle
to its pre-loss condition was due to the inferior quality of the part, rather than to other causes,
such as poor workmanship by the bodyshop; and (5) that he suffered some reasonably
ascertainable economic injury as a result. Even if a plaintiff could prove all of these
elements, State Farm would still have the right, in any individual case, to assert a variety of
individual defenses, such as waiver or consent. As demonstrated below, there was simply
no way to adjudicate every element of plaintiffs’ claims on a classwide basis. Instead, the
only way plaintiffs could possibly meet their burden of proving each of the elements of a
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