The Ninth Circuit Enters the Class Certification Fray: Sals’s Rejection of Evidentiary Formalism and its Implications

In 2015, registered nurses brought a putative employment class action against the hospital that employed them, alleging that the hospital underpaid them by rounding their time in violation of California law. The United States District Court for the Central District of California denied class certification because the evidence that the plaintiffs submitted to demonstrate the “typicality requirement” for class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 was inadmissible. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that inadmissibility alone is not a proper basis for denying class certification, adding to the circuit split over the issue of whether evidence submitted at class certification proceedings must be admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. This Comment analyzes the Ninth Circuit’s position in the circuit split and argues that, because of the nature of the evidentiary challenges in Sali v. Corona Regional Medical, the applicability of its holding remains unclear for cases where evidentiary objections go to the form rather than the substance of the evidence.