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

The corollary of these fundamental principles is that class members who cannot
prove individual injury cannot recover simply because other members of the class may have
been injured. A class member is not permitted “to recover damages sustained not by him,
but by someone else who happens to be a member of such class.” Windham v. American
Brands, Inc., 565 F.2d 59, 66 (4th Cir. 1977); see also Kelly, 308 Ill.App.3d at 644 (where
only some of the batteries Sears sold were allegedly defective, plaintiff in a purported class
action had to plead and prove that the battery he himself purchased was defective). Thus,
plaintiffs could not properly prevail on behalf of a nearly five million-member class by
persuading a jury that “global” evidence showed that State Farm somehow breached its
“contract with the class.” Instead, in order to have a class at all, plaintiffs had to be able to
demonstrate through common proof which class members’ contracts were breached and what
losses those particular class members actually suffered. When it became obvious that
plaintiffs could not possibly meet that burden, the circuit court had an obligation to decertify
the class.
Meineke is directly on point. In that case, as in this one, the plaintiffs recovered an
enormous judgment by “portray[ing] the class at trial as a large, unified group that suffered
a uniform, collective injury.” 155 F.3d at 345. The plaintiffs in Meineke created a
“composite” plaintiff by presenting their case on an aggregate basis, “litigat[ing their case]
not on behalf of themselves but on behalf of a ‘perfect plaintiff’ pieced together for
litigation.” Id. at 344. The Fourth Circuit reversed the judgment, holding that the trial court
erred in allowing the plaintiffs to portray the class as if it were a single entity with a single
contract, when it was entirely possible that the defendant had breached its contract with only
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