A Carluzzo Rochkind & Smith note: Following is an excellent article by Virginia Lawyers Weekly. We did not handle this case, but it brings up important points your personal injury lawyers should be familiar with. For more than 30 years our personal injury lawyers in Manassas have helped clients with such matters in Prince William County, Fairfax County, Woodbridge, and throughout Northern Virginia. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment, please contact our law firm at (703) 361-0776.
Prior settlement doesn’t bar wrongful death claim
By Virginia Lawyers Weekly – 2/4/2024
Where the manufacturer of allegedly defective flooring previously reached a settlement that resolved various consumer protection claims, that agreement didn’t bar this wrongful death suit. The scope of the class claims and the facts underlying the class complaints conclusively show that the settlement agreement did not settle claims premised on bodily injury or wrongful death.
Background
Carla J. Kappel, as mother and next friend of the children of Ozan Tarabus, deceased, and as special administrator of his estate, sued LL Flooring Inc., formerly known as Lumber Liquidators Inc. Kappel’s wrongful death lawsuit was dismissed by the district court on the proposition that the claim was barred by a settlement agreement that had been made in connection with two multidistrict litigation, or MDL, actions conducted in the Eastern District of Virginia that resolved various consumer protection claims relating to LL Flooring’s products.
Jurisdiction
Kappel maintains that the district court erroneously decided that it possessed subject matter jurisdiction over her wrongful death complaint. According to Kappel, the MDL order did not expressly provide that it was retaining jurisdiction over disputes arising under the settlement agreement. In response, LL Flooring argues that the district court possessed diversity of citizenship jurisdiction. The court agrees.
Kappel’s wrongful death lawsuit was initiated in the Illinois state court and removed to the Northern District of Illinois on diversity of citizenship grounds. The facts supporting removal and recited in the removal notice included the following: (1) Kappel is a citizen of Illinois; (2) LL Flooring is a citizen of Delaware and Virginia and (3) the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000. Kappel did not challenge those allegations or otherwise seek a remand to the Illinois state court.
LL Flooring then secured a transfer of Kappel’s wrongful death lawsuit from the Northern District of Illinois to the Eastern District of Virginia under 28 U.S.C. § 1407. The district court in Virginia thus possessed subject matter jurisdiction over Kappel’s wrongful death lawsuit predicated on diversity of citizenship.
Scope
The district court reasoned that Kappel’s wrongful death lawsuit was settled and reduced to judgment because all claims against LL Flooring regarding its defective laminate flooring were covered by the settlement agreement. Kappel responded that the claims for bodily injury and death being pursued on behalf of Mr. Tarabus and his children were materially distinct from all the claims in the MDL proceedings, and thus not covered by the settlement agreement. The court agrees with Kappel.
The scope of the class claims and the facts underlying the class complaints conclusively show that the settlement agreement did not settle claims premised on bodily injury or wrongful death. The class claims included allegations focused on the quality of the subject flooring and on LL Flooring’s deception in its sales and marketing.
The allegations in Kappel’s wrongful death lawsuit concern the bodily injuries Mr. Tarabus experienced and the contaminated laminate flooring’s causal connection to his cancer diagnosis. Although there are shared factual allegations with the consumer class claims — i.e., LL Flooring had marketed and sold flawed flooring products — the class representatives notably failed to allege that any member of the class had experienced bodily injuries or death.
Important here, the settlement class representatives at least twice made clear that they were not pursuing personal injury claims on a class-wide basis. Because the class representatives to the settlement agreement in these proceedings failed to allege that the laminate flooring produced and sold by LL Flooring caused personal injuries or deaths, Kappel’s wrongful death claim for the benefit of Mr. Tarabus’s children could not “depend upon the very same set of facts” as the settled class claims.
Vacated and remanded.
Concurring opinion
Wilkinson, J., concurring:
I do not understand the majority to say that releases cannot bar claims that have not been brought or fully litigated, but only those claims that lie distinctly outside the ambit of the class action proper. I likewise do not understand the majority to announce a per se rule that a release in every products liability suit necessarily allows subsequent actions for injuries arising from the product itself.
Rules that broad could well drain all meaning from the release. I trust that the “identical factual predicate” doctrine will be applied with the facts of the particular litigation foremost in mind and with due respect for the lubricative role that releases play in beneficial class action settlements.
Kappel v. LL Flooring Inc., Case No. 22-1643, Jan. 17, 2024. 4th Cir. (King), from EDVA at Alexandria (Trenga). Kenneth Gordon Anspach for Appellants. Halli D. Cohn for Appellee. VLW 024-2-027. 21 pp.
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