Art. 592.Certification Procedure; Notice; Judgment; Orders

Article 592 puts a clock on class certification: within ninety days after every adverse party has been served with the pleading demanding class relief, the party proposing the class must move to certify the action as a class action, though the parties can stretch that deadline by agreement or the court can extend it for good cause. Miss the deadline without an extension, and an adverse party can put the proponent on notice of the failure; after a hearing, the court may strike the class-relief demand and let the case continue as an ordinary suit between the named parties alone — though the proponent can ask to have the class demand reinstated on a showing of good cause.

No court can grant certification without first holding a hearing, and that hearing cannot happen until every named adverse party has been served or has appeared (or, for defendants who remain unserved, the proponent has made a due and diligent effort to serve them) and until the parties have had a reasonable chance to take discovery on certification issues, including expert testimony. At the hearing, the burden falls on the class proponent to prove every Article 591 prerequisite is met. Whichever way the court rules, either side can ask for written findings of fact and reasons within ten days of the ruling, and either side may take a suspensive or devolutive appeal as a matter of right — a genuine departure from the ordinary rule that interlocutory orders in Louisiana require a supervisory writ rather than an appeal. And certification is never locked in for good: the court can alter, amend, or recall its ruling, or redefine the class or its issues, any time before the common issues are decided on the merits.

Notice to absent class members is required only when the class is certified under Article 591(B)(3) — the predominance-and-superiority category that covers most damages classes. That notice has to be the best practicable under the circumstances, individually addressed to every member who can be found through reasonable effort, and it must reach members with time to spare before trial on the merits begins, since it carries their opportunity to opt out. Its contents are prescribed in detail: a description of the case and relief sought, the right to be excluded and how to exercise it, a statement that the judgment binds everyone who does not opt out, the option to appear through separate counsel, a warning that further steps like a proof of claim may be required, a description of any counterclaim against the class, and contact information for class counsel. The class proponent ordinarily pays for this notice, though the court can require the opposing party to help track down members' addresses and can tax notice costs as part of the case's costs. Classes certified under the other two categories in Article 591(B) — the incompatible-standards and injunctive-relief categories — carry no such notice requirement here, since those classes bind their members without an opt-out option.

Once entered, the certification judgment has to describe who is in the class; for a Paragraph B(3) class, it must also identify who received notice and did not opt out. Article 592 also hands the court a broad toolkit of case-management orders along the way — orders controlling how the litigation unfolds, requiring notice to the class at various stages, imposing conditions on representatives or intervenors, or trimming pleadings to keep individual claims out of a class trial. That last power carries a firm boundary: the court cannot order a class-wide trial of issues that depend on proof individual to a member, such as causation of that member's own injury or the size of that member's own damages. These orders can be folded into the pretrial conference order under Article 1551 and revised as the case develops.