Section 1950

Citation: Section 1950
Parent Document: Granberry v. Islay Investments, 889 P.2d 970 (1995)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 1995-03-06
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1436586/granberry-v-islay-investments/ ↗

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The trial court erased the distinction between these two concepts by making the amount of the class recovery turn on the effectiveness of the distribution method it selected. Using the trial court’s formula, by definition there would never be any unpaid residuals in class actions because defendants would never have any liability for any amounts not claimed by class members. By making the landlord liable only for the security withheld from those class members who step forward to claim a refund and not for the security withheld from the class as a whole, the trial court in effect narrowed the class without notice after the trial had concluded and extinguished the causes of action of the nonclaiming class members. Instead, the trial court should have first determined the landlord’s total liability to the class as a whole and then developed a method for distributing that amount to the class members to the extent feasible and for dealing with any unclaimed residual.

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