The district court abused its discretion in certifying classes in this suit by plaintiffs who had accepted defendants’ agreements for lump sum payments in return for the plaintiffs’ rights to receive payments over time under structured settlements from prior litigation. In every state, defendants’ agreements had to be approved by a state court, some with more, some with less stringent examination of the benefits to plaintiffs from the agreement. The decision holds that causation was a required element of each of plaintiff’s legal theories based on defendant’s alleged misrepresentations about the advantages of its agreements. The causation element was a predominant noncommon issue because (a) the negotiation of the agreements involved much individual communication between a class member and defendant’s representatives, (b) there were varying degrees of sophistication and need for immediate cash among class members, and (c) differing court procedures were involved in approving the agreements. Class certification is improper when “a court would have to hear evidence regarding each purported class member and his transaction.” These individual issues could not be circumvented by a classwide inference of reliance. That inference is not permissible when the chain of causation is complex as in this case. In this case reliance was not the only logical explanation for plaintiff’s behavior. The district court also erred in certifying a class of plaintiffs whose structured settlement agreements provided that plaintiffs lacked the power to accelerate or anticipate payments by assignment. Here, the predominant non-common issue was state law as to the enforceability of the anti-assignment clause–an issue on which state laws vary widely.