No Wrecked-Car Class

Reiterating a recent holding in a near-identical lawsuit, in Bourque v. State Farm the Fifth Circuit rejected the certification of a class of insureds who were dissatisfied with the amount paid by State Farm for their wrecked cars:

Plaintiffs contended that they had met this standard because any class member who was paid less than the [National Automobile Dealers’ Association] value of their vehicle necessarily received less than [Actual Cash Value] and therefore suffered an injury. But we rejected that premise, explaining that NADA value was just one of many statutorily acceptable methods for calculating ACV, and therefore pinning ACV to NADA value constituted an impermissibly arbitrary choice of a liability model. 

No. 22-30126 (Dec. 22, 2023).