In Martin v. Pacific Parking Systems Inc., — Fed.Appx. —-, 2014 WL 3686135 (9th Cir. 2014), the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a denial of class certification in a FACTA—credit card digits truncation case that a class could not be certified because it could not be determined whether the cards used were consumer or business cards.
The district court had found, based on factual evidence specific to this case, that “many” of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who used the parking lots did so on business. Id. at 586 n. 5. Furthermore, the district court had concluded that the proposed class was not ascertainable because there was no reasonably efficient way to determine which of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who used the parking lots “used a personal credit or debit card, rather than a business or corporate card,” to purchase parking. Id. at 585; see, e.g., Pierce v. County of Orange, 526 F.3d 1190, 1200 (9th Cir.2008) (concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in decertifying a damages class because “Rule 23(b)(3) would not offer a superior method for fair and efficient adjudication in light of expected difficulties identifying class members”). Because Martin has not demonstrated that it would be administratively feasible to determine which individuals used personal, and not business, credit cards to purchase parking, Rowden, 282 F.R.D. at 585–86, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the proposed class was not ascertainable.