Scott v. Dart, No. 23-1312 (7th Cir. 2024)
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The case involves Quintin Scott, a former pretrial detainee at the Cook County Jail, who filed a class action lawsuit against Cook County and its sheriff. Scott alleged that the county provided him and other pretrial detainees with inadequate dental care, violating the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court refused to certify the class, and Scott settled his individual claim but reserved his right to appeal the class ruling and to seek an incentive award for his role as the named plaintiff.
The County argued that Scott lacked standing to pursue the class aspects of the case, contending that he no longer had a live interest in the litigation and that courts were forbidden from granting incentive awards. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit disagreed, finding that Scott had standing and that incentive awards were permissible. The court also concluded that the district court had abused its discretion in denying class certification, as it had misapplied a previous decision and used too strict a standard.
The Court of Appeals vacated the district court's order and remanded the case for further proceedings, noting that the district court was free to revise the class definition as needed to address any overbreadth issues. The court also noted that the district court had not addressed whether the proposed class met the requirements of numerosity and adequacy of representation, which must be satisfied before the class can be certified.
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In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 23-1312 QUINTIN SCOTT, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. THOMAS J. DART, Sheriff of Cook County, and COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS, Defendants-Appellees. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:17-cv-07135 — Martha M. Pacold, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED DECEMBER 7, 2023 — DECIDED APRIL 29, 2024 ____________________ Before WOOD, KIRSCH, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judges. WOOD, Circuit Judge. Quintin Scott, a former pretrial detainee at the Cook County Jail, led this class action more than six years ago. Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Scott asserts that Cook County and its sheri (collectively, the “County”) provided him and other pretrial detainees inadequate dental care in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court 2 No. 23-1312 refused to certify the class, and soon after, Scott voluntarily settled his individual claim. But the settlement reserved his right to appeal the adverse class ruling and to seek an incentive award for his role as named plainti . 1 Scott followed through with this timely appeal. The County contends that Scott lacks Article III standing to pursue the class aspects of this case. It asserts that Scott no longer has a live interest in the litigation, and that even if he did, we could not redress his injury because nineteenth-century Supreme Court precedent forbids courts from granting “incentive awards.” We nd these arguments unpersuasive, largely because we do not agree with the County’s reading of the Supreme Court’s decisions. We see no reason to stray from nearly half a century of case law in which courts across the country have granted incentive awards to named plainti s in class actions. We also conclude that the district court abused its discretion in denying class certi cation, as it misapplied our decision in McFields v. Dart, 982 F.3d 511 (7th Cir. 2020), and based its decision on too strict a standard. If the district court’s approach were correct, it would never be possible to certify a class of detainees alleging that they were denied adequate medical care because medical care, by its nature, is individualized. We therefore vacate the district court’s order and remand for further proceedings. 1 The original named plaintiff in this case was Montrell Carr. Scott joined the case in an amended complaint filed on July 13, 2018. After the district court denied class certification, Carr settled his claim and accepted an unconditional offer of judgment. Carr’s settlement did not reserve his right to appeal; this leaves Scott as the sole named plaintiff. No. 23-1312 3 I Cook County Jail (the “Jail”) is one of the nation’s largest single-site jails, housing approximately 9,500 detainees at any given time. As custodian of the Jail, the County has a constitutional obligation to provide its detainees with adequate medical care. See Daniel v. Cook County, 833 F.3d 728, 733 (7th Cir. 2016). But unfortunately, it has not always met that obligation. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) concluded after an investigation that the Jail maintained grossly de cient policies and practices that denied constitutionally adequate medical care to detainees. 2 The DOJ’s extensive ndings have since served as the basis for an onslaught of litigation brought by detainees challenging various aspects of the Jail’s policies and practices. See, e.g., United States v. Cook County, 761 F.Supp.2d 794 (N.D. Ill. 2011). In 2010 the County and the DOJ entered into a consent order, in which the County agreed to allow regular monitoring by the federal government and to ensure adequate medical sta at the Jail. That brings us to this lawsuit, which takes aim at the County’s refusal for more than a decade to keep an oral surgeon on sta at the Jail. Back in 2006, the County employed four dentists and one oral surgeon to serve the Jail’s detainees. The oral surgeon performed a variety of procedures that general dentists do not perform, including di cult extractions and diagnoses of other complex dental cases. In 2007, however, the County reduced the dental sta to just one dentist, 2 See Letter from Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Att’y Gen., Civil Rights Div., U.S. Dep’t of Just., to Thomas Dart, Cook County Sheriff, and to Todd H. Stroger, Cook County Board President (Jul. 11, 2008) (available at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/04/13/CookCountyJail_findingsletter_7-11-08.pdf). 4 No. 23-1312 whose services were limited to extractions. Although the County eventually hired more dentists, as part of its e ort to comply with the DOJ’s consent order, it did not ll the oral surgeon position at the Jail. By March 12, 2020—the end date of the proposed class—the County still had not hired an oral surgeon for the Jail. (The record does not indicate whether this remains the case today.) With no on-site oral surgeon, the County adopted a new practice: if an on-site dentist examined a detainee and determined that the detainee required treatment from an oral surgeon, the dentist would then refer the detainee to the oral surgery clinic at John H. Stroger, Jr., Hospital of Cook County (“Stroger Hospital”). Scott alleges that the lack of an on-site oral surgeon has caused him and other detainees to experience unnecessary pain and signi cant delays in receiving treatment. He has presented evidence to show that County o cials were aware of the need for an on-site oral surgeon but turned a blind eye to the su ering of detainees, many of whom waited months before being transported to Stroger Hospital for treatment. For example, the Jail’s Chief of Dental Services submitted a budget request in June 2011, urging that the County hire an oral surgeon to address the “constant[] su er[ing]” of detainees who waited “anywhere from 2 to 3[] months to be treated” at Stroger Hospital. The Jail’s Director of Oral Health echoed these concerns in an email in April 2016, stating that the Jail was “in DESPERATE need for a part-time oral surgeon” (emphasis in original). Scott was housed at the Jail from June 23, 2013, to May 22, 2014. He began to experience severe tooth pain during that period. On August 6, 2013, Scott submitted a Health Service Request Form explaining that he had di culty eating, that his No. 23-1312 5 tooth “throbbed all night long,” and that it “hurts like hell.” An on-site dentist examined Scott two days later, determined that he needed surgery to have his wisdom teeth removed, and referred him to Stroger Hospital. Three months later, Scott still had not received treatment. He submitted a grievance on November 18, 2013, complaining: “I am su ering!!! I am in pain, can’t lie down and eat properly, and have frequent headaches.” On December 8, 2013, Scott submitted a second grievance stating: “I have yet to see the oral surg[eon] and the pain is getting to be unbearable. I am su ering!!!” Scott nally received the treatment he needed from an oral surgeon on March 28, 2014, seven months after the dentist had referred him for treatment. As further support for his allegations, Scott has submitted the written grievances of 11 detainees who also endured signi cant delays in receiving oral surgery. Each of these detainees was examined by an on-site dentist, was referred to Stroger Hospital for treatment by an oral surgeon, and experienced delays ranging from four to 19 weeks in receiving that treatment. Because these detainees’ experiences are relevant to the issues on appeal, we recount a few of them. (We refer to each grievant by the initials of their rst and last names because the County produced the underlying documents subject to a con dentiality order.) J.C. submitted the following grievance on April 29, 2014: I have wires on my mouth that I have been asking the Doctor and nurses if I can go to Stroger Hospital to have them remove because they are cutting my gums and make them bleed, and they causing me pain every time I eat. … On April 17, 2014, Dr. Martinez told me 6 No. 23-1312 that he was going to send me to the specialist in Stroger but I still haven’t gone. J.C. was not taken to Stroger Hospital until August 15, 2014, more than 17 weeks after his referral was entered. T.P. submitted a grievance on March 17, 2015, complaining: Today I went and seen Dental, Dr. Montgomery, because I have a rotten tooth that needs to be pulled. She agreed it needs to be pulled. Yet she did not do it. She said I was being referred to a oral surgeon which would 4-6 months, which is unethical as well as deliberate medical neglect. I do not have enough pain medicine for pain. As well as I can’t drink anything cold. To drink water it has to be hot. I’m having problems sleeping due to pain … . T.P. was not taken to the oral surgeon until May 19, 2015, nine weeks after he was referred to Stroger Hospital. Similarly, C.O. submitted a grievance on January 2, 2018, complaining that he was “still in tremendous pain” as he had been waiting weeks to have his wisdom tooth removed. An o cial at the Jail responded to C.O.’s grievance a few weeks later, telling C.O that he should continue to take the acetaminophen that he had been prescribed for his pain. C.O. appealed, reiterating that he was “still in terrible pain.” On February 15, 2018, a grievance o cer at the Jail issued a response stating that the “Decision stands. Appts for oral surgery can take 90 days or more.” After discovery, Scott sought to certify the following class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3): No. 23-1312 7 All persons who were detained at the Cook County Jail at any time between November 1, 2013 and March 12, 2020 and, after having been referred to an oral surgeon by a dentist at the Jail, awaited treatment at the Stroger Hospital Oral Surgery Clinic, excluding those persons who are members of the subclass certi ed in Whitney v. Khan, 18-cv-4475, N.D. Ill., Mem. Op. March 25, 2020, ECF No. 175. 3 Although Scott has not pinpointed a de nite number of plainti s in the proposed class, he asserts that we can estimate its size based on two spreadsheets the County provided during discovery. The rst indicates that dentists at the Jail made 2,080 referrals to Stroger Hospital between February 20, 2014, and July 7, 2017; the second identi es 2,186 detainees who were scheduled to be transported from the Jail to the oral surgery clinic at Stroger Hospital between January 3, 2013, and October 9, 2019. Adding these gures together, the district court assumed for purposes of assessing class certi cation that the class contains anywhere from 2,080 to 4,266 members. Despite those numbers, the district court refused to certify the class. Relying heavily on our decision in McFields, it found 3 Whitney v. Khan was a similar classwide challenge in which detainees at the Jail’s Residential Treatment Unit (“RTU”) alleged that they had received inadequate dental care. The district court certified a class of detainees who “submitted a written ‘Health Service Request Form’ processed as ‘urgent’ by the RTU dental assistant and who did not receive an evaluation by a dentist for at least 14 days after submitting the request.” Relevant here, the district court later certified a subclass of detainees “who were subsequently referred by the RTU dentist to the Stroger Hospital Oral Surgery Clinic.” The district court approved a class settlement in Whitney on August 5, 2021. See Whitney, 18-cv-4475, ECF No. 318. 8 No. 23-1312 that the proposed class failed to meet the commonality, typicality, predominance, and superiority requirements of Rule 23. It rst observed that given the nature of the plainti s’ claims, they could not prevail unless they established that the County’s policy decision not to keep an oral surgeon on sta at the Jail was objectively unreasonable. It then jumped to the question whether each class member received objectively unreasonable care. The second point, it thought, turns on individualized factors such as the type of dental problem, the seriousness of the condition, and the urgency of the need for treatment. The necessity of moving to the person-by-person level defeated the e ort to show a common question capable of classwide resolution, in the court’s view. The same problem a icted the plainti s’ e orts to establish the elements of typicality, predominance, and superiority. Scott accepted a conditional o er of judgment following the district court’s ruling. See FED. R. CIV. P. 68. In that agreement, Scott agreed to settle his individual claim for $7,500 but, as we noted earlier, he expressly reserved his right to appeal the denial of class certi cation and to seek an incentive award for his role as a named plainti . II Before turning to the principal issue on appeal, we must ensure that we have Article III jurisdiction over this matter. Article III con nes the federal courts to resolving “the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies.” Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, 569 U.S. 66, 71 (2013). Standing doctrine gives e ect to this limitation. To establish standing, the plainti must “have (1) su ered an injury in fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” No. 23-1312 9 Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 338 (2016). These elements must be present at all stages of the litigation, not just at its inception. Genesis Healthcare Corp., 569 U.S. at 71. The County urges that Scott lacks standing for two reasons. First, it asserts that Scott no longer has a live interest in the case because he settled his individual claim and can obtain only an incentive award if the class ultimately prevails. Second, the County contends that to the extent Scott has an injury, it is an incentive award banned by two Supreme Court cases (decided well before the advent of Rule 23): Internal Improvement Fund Trustees v. Greenough, 105 U.S. 527 (1881), and Central Railroad & Banking Co. v. Pettus, 113 U.S. 116 (1885). We nd neither point persuasive. A. Injury in fact As the County concedes, we already have concluded that the prospect of an incentive award is enough to support the named plainti ’s concrete interest in the litigation. See Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC, 688 F.3d 872, 876–77 (7th Cir. 2012). In Espenscheid, the named plainti s voluntarily settled their claims with the defendants after the district court denied class certi cation. When the named plainti s later appealed that ruling, the defendants argued that they no longer had a cognizable interest in the continuation of the suit. We rejected that argument because a provision of the settlement agreement permitted the named plainti s to seek an incentive award for their services as class representatives. Id. at 874. “The prospect of [an incentive] award,” we concluded, “is akin to a damages payment agreed in a settlement to be contingent upon the outcome of the appeal; and the prospect of such a payment, though probabilistic rather than certain, suf ces to confer standing.” Id. at 875. 10 No. 23-1312 In reaching that conclusion, we explained that incentive awards are designed to compensate named plainti s for the costs incurred in performing their role as class representatives—costs above and beyond what they would bear as ordinary class members. Id. at 876–77. These costs include the time and e ort that named plainti s must spend learning about the case (class members must have enough familiarity with the case to satisfy the “adequacy” requirement of Rule 23(a)(4)); sitting for depositions; complying with discovery requests; monitoring class counsel; and reviewing and approving any proposed settlement agreements. 5 WILLIAM B. RUBENSTEIN, NEWBERG AND RUBENSTEIN ON CLASS ACTIONS § 17:3 (6th ed., Nov. 2023 update); Theodore Eisenberg & Geo rey P. Miller, Incentive Awards to Class Action Plainti s: An Empirical Study, 53 UCLA L. REV. 1303, 1305–06 (2006). Incentive awards compensate the named plainti for bearing certain risks inherent in stepping forward to represent the class: “should the suit fail, [the named plainti ] may nd himself liable for the defendant’s costs or even, if the suit is held to have been frivolous, for the defendant’s attorneys’ fees.” Espenscheid, 688 F.3d at 876 ( rst citing Katz v. Household Int’l, Inc., 91 F.3d 1036, 1040 (7th Cir. 1996); and then citing Blue v. United States Dep’t of the Army, 914 F.2d 525, 534 (4th Cir. 1990)). And in certain contexts, such as employment discrimination actions, incentive awards may also recognize the added risks of retaliation or stigmatization that named plainti s assume in participating in a lawsuit against their current or former employers. See Eisenberg & Miller, supra, at 1305; see also RUBENSTEIN § 17:3 n.17 (collecting district court cases awarding incentive fees on this basis). No. 23-1312 11 We further emphasized in Espenscheid that preventing the settling plainti from appealing would undermine judicial economy, “since if the named plainti s settle after denial of class certi cation and then exit the scene another member of the class can step forward and take the quitters’ place.” 688 F.3d at 877–78. Along the same lines, the Supreme Court has held that defendants cannot moot an appeal from a denial of class certi cation by simply buying o the individual claims of the named plainti s. Deposit Guar. Nat’l Bank v. Roper, 445 U.S. 326, 339 (1980). “Requiring multiple plainti s to bring separate actions,” the Court reasoned, “obviously would frustrate the objectives of class actions; moreover it would invite waste of judicial resources by stimulating successive suits brought by others claiming aggrievement.” Id. Since Espenscheid, we have rea rmed that the “the possibility of an incentive award … is enough of an interest to keep the claim justiciable.” Weil v. Metal Technologies, Inc., 925 F.3d 352, 357 (7th Cir. 2019); see also Wright v. Calumet City, 848 F.3d 814, 819 (7th Cir. 2017). To be sure, we clari ed in Wright that the settlement agreement must expressly reserve the rights of the named plainti s to pursue an incentive award on appeal in order to secure standing. See 848 F.3d at 819–20. But that is not a problem here, as the settlement agreement did just that. The County nonetheless argues that Scott has not su ered an injury in fact because he has not provided “any services to the class” that would entitle him to an incentive award. The record dispels that assertion. Scott joined the case as a named plainti nearly six years ago. Since then, Scott has prepared for and sat for a deposition, monitored and conferred with class counsel, and assisted with discovery. Though these 12 No. 23-1312 services may “not [be] onerous,” and though “the risk of incurring liability [should the suit fail] is small,” we have held that even modest services justify an incentive award. See Espenscheid, 688 F.3d at 877; see also Phillips v. Asset Acceptance, LLC, 736 F.3d 1076, 1080 (7th Cir. 2013) (noting that incentive awards compensate class representatives “for what usually are minimal services”). This is enough to show that Scott has an ongoing stake in the litigation. B. Redressability We also are unpersuaded by the County’s view of redressability. The County argues that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Greenough and Pettus forbid federal courts from granting incentive awards to named plainti s in class actions. It nds support for this argument in a recent decision from the Eleventh Circuit, which extended those late-nineteenth-century cases to reach the surprising conclusion that incentive awards are per se unlawful. See Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, 975 F.3d 1244 (11th Cir. 2020). To make sense of Johnson, we must rst look carefully at Greenough and Pettus. These two cases recognized the “common-fund doctrine.” Boeing Co. v. Van Gemert, 444 U.S. 472, 478 (1980). Under this doctrine, which is rooted in restitution principles, “a litigant or a lawyer who recovers a common fund for the bene t of persons other than himself or his client is entitled to a reasonable attorney’s fee from the fund as a whole.” Id. In Greenough, the Supreme Court identi ed limits on the type of fee that a litigant may recover from a common fund. The case involved a creditor, Francis Vose, who led a suit on behalf of himself and other bondholders for alleged No. 23-1312 13 mismanagement of a common fund on the part of the trustees. 105 U.S. at 528. Vose, the Court said, carried on the litigation “with great vigor and at much expense” and ultimately “secured and saved” much of the trust fund, to the bene t of the other bondholders. Id. at 529. He then asked the district court for an “allowance out of the fund for his expenses and services.” Id. The district court awarded Vose attorneys’ fees, litigation expenses, an allowance of $2,500 a year for ten years for “personal services,” and “personal expenditures” of $15,003.35 for his travel expenses incurred while litigating the case. Id. at 530. On appeal, the Supreme Court a rmed the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses, explaining that forcing Vose to bear those costs “would not only be unjust to him,” but would confer “an unfair advantage” on all the bondholders who had reaped the bene ts of his e orts. Id. at 532. The Court further reasoned that these expenses were recoverable because common-law trust cases had established “a general principle that a trust estate must bear the expenses of its administration.” Id. at 532–33. But the Court reversed the award of “personal services and private expenses,” which it saw as akin to a “salary.” Id. at 537–38. The Court explained that, unlike the attorneys’ and litigation fees, “no authority whatever” permitted the award of a salary to a named plainti , and such awards would “present too great a temptation to parties to intermeddle in the management of valuable property or funds in which they have only the interest of creditors[.]” Id. at 537–38. The Court decided Pettus a few years later. There, it con rmed that attorneys could recover expenses for their e orts on behalf of clients from the common fund. 113 U.S. at 127– 14 No. 23-1312 28. Pettus said nothing about what private plainti s could recover, and so its relevance to this case is minimal. Fast forward about 140 years to 2020. That was the year in which the Eleventh Circuit’s Johnson decision muddied the waters by unexpectedly declaring that the modern-day incentive award is “roughly analogous” to the “salary” (or “personal services and private expenses”) that were prohibited in Greenough. 975 F.3d at 1244. “If anything,” it said, “modernday incentive awards present even more pronounced risks than the salary and expense reimbursements disapproved in Greenough” because “[i]ncentive awards are intended not only to compensate class representatives for their time (i.e., as a salary), but also to promote litigation by providing a prize to be won (i.e., as a bounty).” Id. at 1258. Although the court acknowledged that incentive awards are virtually ubiquitous in class-action cases today, it found that this “state of a airs is a product of inertia and inattention, not adherence to law.” Id. at 1259. The County now urges us to adopt this application of Greenough and Pettus. We decline that invitation. As the court in Johnson admitted, there is a long-standing practice of awarding incentive fees to named plainti s in class actions. Indeed, up until Johnson, we and the rest of our sister circuits accepted the fact that district courts have the authority to grant incentive awards to named plainti s. See, e.g., Cook v. Niedert, 142 F.3d 1004, 1016 (7th Cir. 1998) (a rming a class representative’s $25,000 incentive award); Bezdek v. Vibram USA, Inc., 809 F.3d 78, 82 (1st Cir. 2015); Melito v. Experian Mktg. Sols., Inc., 923 F.3d 85, 96 (2d Cir. 2019); Sullivan v. DB Invs., Inc., 667 F.3d 273, 333 n.65 (3d Cir. 2011) (en banc); Berry v. Schulman, 807 F.3d 600, 613– 14 (4th Cir. 2015); Jones v. Singing River Health Servs. Found., No. 23-1312 15 865 F.3d 285 (5th Cir. 2017) (vacating a class-action settlement with an incentive award on other grounds and a rming the same settlement after the district court provided further explanation in 742 F. App’x 846 (5th Cir. 2018)); Pelzer v. Vassalle, 655 F. App’x 352, 361 (6th Cir. 2016) (unpublished); Caligiuri v. Symantec Corp., 855 F.3d 860, 867–68 (8th Cir. 2017); Roes, 1– 2 v. SFBSC Mgmt., LLC, 944 F.3d 1035, 1057 (9th Cir. 2019); Tennille v. Western Union Co., 785 F.3d 422, 434–35 (10th Cir. 2015); Cobell v. Salazar, 679 F.3d 909, 922–23 (D.C. Cir. 2012). The opinions in these cases demonstrate that this consensus was not a “product of inertia and inattention.” Johnson, 975 F.3d at 1259. It instead re ects a signi cant historical development. As the Second Circuit recently explained, “Greenough and Pettus have been superseded, not merely by practice and usage, but by Rule 23, which creates a much broader and more muscular class action device than the common law predecessor that spawned nineteenth-century precedents.” Moses v. New York Times Company, 79 F.4th 235, 254–55 (2d Cir. 2023); see also Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, 43 F.4th 1138, 1144–50 (11th Cir. 2022) (mem.) (Jill Pryor, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (explaining that the panel decision in Johnson “fail[ed] to account for the historical development of incentive awards”). Recall that the Greenough Court distinguished attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses from “personal services and private expenses” in part by noting that there was “no authority whatever” that allowed for litigants to be compensated in common-fund cases. 105 U.S. at 537. At the time, “courts were con ned to the application of federal general common law and equitable principles.” Moses, 79 F.4th at 254. Today, there is no general federal common law, see Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 16 No. 23-1312 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938), and Rule 23 creates the framework for modern class actions. Moses, 79 F.4th at 254–55. Although Rule 23 does not use the phrase “incentive award,” courts have long recognized that named plainti s may receive compensation for shouldering the time-consuming burdens of litigation and assuming risks of nancial, and potentially reputational, harm. See RUBENSTEIN § 17:3. In 2018, Rule 23(e) was amended to ensure that a district court may approve a settlement only if it “treats class members equitably relative to each other.” FED. R. CIV. P. 23(e)(2)(D). Incentive awards are consistent with this mandate because the named plainti s invest in the case more heavily than their unnamed counterparts. Moses, 79 F.4th at 253. The County would have us overlook the changes that accompanied the historical shift from common-law to Rule 23 class actions. In its view, the common-fund cases look enough like class actions that we should simply extend the commonlaw doctrine to this wholly new context. But we are unwilling to divorce those cases from the context in which they were decided. As the Supreme Court has reminded us, courts must “read general language in judicial opinions ... as referring in context to circumstances similar to the circumstances then before the Court and not referring to quite di erent circumstances that the Court was not then considering.” See Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 424 (2004). This is not the rst time we have rejected the argument that the Supreme Court’s common-fund-doctrine cases prohibit incentive awards. In In re Continental Illinois Securities Litigation, 962 F.2d 566, 571 (7th Cir. 1992), the named plainti appealed the district court’s refusal to award him a $10,000 fee for “modest services” as class representative. We began No. 23-1312 17 our analysis of that issue by considering “whether a named plainti is ever entitled to [such] a fee” in light of the Supreme Court’s common-fund cases: The usual formulations of the common-fund doctrine describe the plainti rather than his lawyer as the person entitled to be compensated for the expenses he has incurred in conferring a bene t on the (other) bene ciaries of the common fund. See, e.g., Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund v. Greenough, 105 U.S. 527 (1882); Sprague v. Ticonic National Bank, 307 U.S. 161 (1939); Boeing Co. v. Van Gemert, 444 U.S. at 478 (1980). The principal expense is the attorney’s fee, but there can be others, provided they are not personal. Greenough, 105 U.S. at 537–38; Granada Investments, Inc. v. DWG Corp., No. 91–3297, slip op. at 9 (6th Cir. April 30, 1992). Since without a named plainti there can be no class action, such compensation as may be necessary to induce him to participate in the suit could be thought the equivalent of the lawyers’ nonlegal but essential case-speci c expenses, such as long-distance phone calls, which are reimbursable. In re Continental Illinois Securities Litigation, 962 F.2d at 571 (citations cleaned up). In other words, we concluded that the modern-day incentive award is akin to the kind of monetary award that the Supreme Court blessed in Greenough, not the “personal expenses” it disapproved. The County dismisses our conclusion in In re Continental Illinois Securities Litigation as dicta, but even if we take a fresh look at the issue, we nd the proposed analogy between 18 No. 23-1312 “personal services and private expenses” and incentive awards to be faulty. The County argues that incentive awards are problematic because the “personal interests [of named plainti s] will make them willing to compromise the interests of the class for their own personal gain.” But the Greenough Court had in mind a much di erent concern—that awarding the creditor “personal services and private expenses” would “present too great a temptation to parties to intermeddle in the management of valuable property or funds in which they have only the interest of creditors[.]” 105 U.S. at 538. Put another way, “the [Greenough] Court was concerned that such awards would induce creditors to interfere with the management of funds that had already been entrusted to trustees charged with duciary duties to act in the best interests of the creditors.” Murray v. Grocery Delivery E-Servs. USA Inc., 55 F.4th 340, 352–53 (1st Cir. 2022). The problem was not that the creditor would not adequately represent the interests of the other creditors but rather that the creditor “was not a trustee.” Greenough, 105 U.S. at 537. The drafters of Rule 23 were well aware that con icts of interest might arise between class representatives and class members. The rule contains signi cant safeguards against those risks. It prohibits a court from approving a settlement agreement unless it is “fair, reasonable, and adequate.” That directive applies with full force to incentive awards. FED. R. CIV. P. 23(e)(2). In addition, courts have developed tests for assessing the appropriateness of an incentive award on a caseby-case basis. See RUBENSTEIN § 17:13 (collecting tests used by di erent circuits). In the Seventh Circuit, for example, “relevant factors include the actions the plainti has taken to protect the interests of the class, the degree to which the class has bene tted from those actions, and the amount of time and No. 23-1312 19 e ort the plainti expended in pursuing the litigation.” Cook, 142 F.3d at 1016. Rule 23(e) thus ensures that an incentive award cannot be so large that it amounts to a “salary.” Greenough, 105 U.S. at 538. These safeguards are not just theoretical. The most recent empirical study on incentive awards reviewed approximately 1,200 class actions from 2006 to 2011 and found that the median incentive award per named plainti was $5,250 (or $7,125 in 2023 dollars). See RUBENSTEIN § 17:8. In contrast, the 10-year allowance of $2,500 for “personal services” and award of $15,003.35 for “personal expenditures” that the Supreme Court disapproved of in Greenough in 1881, 105 U.S. at 530, are equivalent to more than $1.4 million today. The Eleventh Circuit also expressed concern that incentive awards may act as a “bounty” for bringing litigation. Johnson, 975 F.3d at 1258. But in so doing, it brushed aside the fact that incentive awards are consistent with the core purpose of Rule 23—“to encourage claimants with small claims to vindicate their rights and to hold unlawful behavior to account.” Murray, 55 F.4th at 353; see also Moses, 79 F.4th at 253 (explaining that class-action lawsuits are “designed to provide a mechanism by which persons, whose injuries are not large enough to make pursuing their individual claims in the court system cost e cient, are able to bind together with persons su ering the same harm and seek redress for their injuries.” ( rst quoting S. Rep. No. 109-14, at 5; and then citing 1 JOSEPH MCLAUGHLIN, MCLAUGHLIN ON CLASS ACTIONS § 1:1 (19th ed. 2022))). A categorical ban on incentive awards would undermine that purpose. We are not alone in rejecting e orts to extend Greenough and Pettus to the class-action context. In the wake of Johnson, 20 No. 23-1312 three of our sister circuits have expressly rejected the Eleventh Circuit’s interpretation of those cases. See Murray, 55 F.4th at 352–53; In re Apple Inc. Device Performance Litig., 50 F.4th 769, 785–87 (9th Cir. 2022); Moses, 79 F.4th at 253–55. Moreover, the Supreme Court recently noted (albeit in a case that did not squarely present the issue) that “[t]he class representative might receive a share of class recovery above and beyond her individual claim.” See China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh, 584 U.S. 732, 747 n.7 (2018) (citing Cook, 142 F.3d at 1016). Against all of this, the Eleventh Circuit’s blanket approach to incentive awards is anomalous. Consistent with historical practice, our precedent, and the majority view on the issue, we conclude that incentive awards to named plainti s are permitted so long as they comply with the requirements of Rule 23. Such an award can redress the injury asserted in this case, and so standing is secure. III We now turn at last to the main event: the denial of class certi cation. We review such a decision only for abuse of discretion, “which can occur when a district court commits legal error or makes clearly erroneous factual ndings.” Bell v. PNC Bank, Nat. Ass’n, 800 F.3d 360, 373 (7th Cir. 2015). Though our review is deferential, it “must also be exacting” because “[a] decision to deny or grant certi cation can have a considerable impact on the playing eld of litigation.” Red Barn Motors, Inc. v. NextGear Capital, Inc., 915 F.3d 1098, 1101 (7th Cir. 2019). A plainti seeking to certify a class must satisfy the four requirements of Rule 23(a)—numerosity, typicality, commonality, and adequacy of representation—as well as one of the categories in Rule 23(b). Orr v. Shicker, 953 F.3d 490, 497 (7th No. 23-1312 21 Cir. 2020). When certi cation is sought under Rule 23(b)(3), as it is here, the plainti must show that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions a ecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for fairly and e ciently adjudicating the controversy.” FED. R. CIV. P. 23(b)(3). The party seeking class treatment bears the burden of showing that each requirement is met by a preponderance of the evidence. Bell, 800 F.3d at 373. The district court rested its denial on four grounds: commonality, typicality, predominance, and superiority. We address each in turn. A. Commonality Rule 23(a)(2) requires the existence of “questions of law or fact common to the class.” FED. R. CIV. P. 23(a)(2). The Supreme Court has clari ed that “even a single common question will do.” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338, 359 (2011) (quotation marks and alteration omitted). But merely showing that the class members “have all su ered a violation of the same provision of law” is not enough to satisfy commonality. Id. at 350. The claims must depend on a common contention that is “capable of classwide resolution—which means that determination of its truth or falsity will resolve an issue that is central to the validity of each one of the claims in one stroke.” Id. The “critical point is the need for conduct common to members of the class.” Suchanek v. Sturm Foods, Inc., 764 F.3d 750, 756 (7th Cir. 2014) (quotation marks and citations omitted). In this case, the claims of the proposed class members all arise from the same course of conduct by the same defendant: 22 No. 23-1312 the County’s decade-long refusal to have an oral surgeon on sta at the Jail. With no oral surgeon readily available, the class members all su ered the same alleged injury: unreasonable delays in receiving treatment for their acknowledged serious dental conditions. The same legal standards govern every class member’s claim. To recover against the County under section 1983, the class members must show that they “(1) su ered a deprivation of a federal right; (2) as a result of either an express municipal policy, widespread custom, or deliberate act of a decision-maker with nal policy-making authority; which (3) was the proximate cause of his injury.” See King v. Kramer, 763 F.3d 635, 649 (7th Cir. 2014) (alterations omitted) (quoting Ienco v. City of Chicago, 286 F.3d 994, 998 (7th Cir. 2002)). See generally Monell v. New York City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Because the class members are pretrial detainees, their claims of inadequate medical care arise under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which is governed by an objective-reasonableness standard. See Miranda v. County of Lake, 900 F.3d 335, 351–54 (7th Cir. 2018). “This standard requires courts to focus on the totality of facts and circumstances faced by the individual alleged to have provided inadequate medical care and to gauge objectively—without regard to any subjective belief held by the individual—whether the response was reasonable.” McCann v. Ogle County, 909 F.3d 881, 886 (7th Cir. 2018). A delay in medical treatment may be objectively unreasonable “if the delay exacerbated the injury or unnecessarily prolonged an inmate’s pain.” See McGowan v. Hulick, 612 F.3d 636, 640 (7th Cir. 2010). With these standards in mind, there is one common question of liability that will yield a common answer: whether the No. 23-1312 23 County’s decision not to keep an oral surgeon on the Jail’s medical sta was objectively unreasonable. As we alluded to earlier, the district court was mistaken in reading our decision in McFields to suggest that this question could not be resolved for the class as a whole. McFields is similar to this case, in that it too involved a proposed class of detainees who alleged that Cook County Jail had provided inadequate dental care in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plainti s in McFields, however, challenged the Jail’s “paper triage policy,” whereby detainees who had dental pain were required to submit a written complaint, sta would categorize that complaint as “routine,” “priority,” or “urgent,” and the detainee would then be referred to a dentist in anywhere from three to 30 days. 982 F.3d at 513. The plainti s alleged that the standard of care required the Jail to provide all detainees who submitted a complaint with a face-to-face assessment by a nurse within 48 hours. The nurse could then identify serious medical issues and dispense over-the-counter pain medication. Id. at 513–14. In reality, not every detainee received a face-to-face assessment within 48 hours of submitting a complaint, and so the McFields plainti s alleged that the paper triage policy was objectively unreasonable. Id. On those facts, we a rmed the district court’s decision to deny class certi cation. As relevant here, we rejected the plainti s’ proposed common question of “whether [the paper triage policy] exposed detainees to a substantial risk of harm in violation of the Constitution.” Id. at 515. “Answering this question in the a rmative,” we reasoned, “requires McFields to prove that the policy was objectively unreasonable, but that is, by its nature, an inquiry not suitable for resolution as to all class members in one fell swoop. Rather, it is an 24 No. 23-1312 individualized inquiry that depends in large part on what is disclosed on each detainee’s [written complaint]—when it was submitted, what type of grievance and what level of pain it reveals, and so forth.” Id. at 516 (citations omitted). In applying McFields to this case, the district court observed that whether each detainee in the proposed class received objectively unreasonable care requires us to look at individualized factors, such as the type of dental issue, degree of pain, and how long each detainee waited before receiving treatment. It then concluded that “the objective reasonableness of [the challenged] policy will depend upon circumstances unique to each individual class member.” But the district court did not grapple with (or even recognize) the salient di erences between the paper triage policy challenged in McFields and the policy challenged here. In McFields, there was no uniform policy being challenged (despite the plainti s’ contention otherwise). The plainti s argued that “most” detainees did not receive a timely face-toface assessment, yet some detainees did receive such an assessment. Id. at 513. Their claims thus could not be construed as a systemic challenge to the County’s provision of dental care. Rather, they were individualized claims of inadequate medical care that could be answered only by examining facts unique to each plainti . In contrast, the Jail’s decision not to put an oral surgeon on sta is a uniform policy that applies to every detainee at the Jail. And the record contains evidence showing that this policy causes systemic treatment delays for detainees who have been referred by a dentist to receive treatment from an oral surgeon. These delays were far longer than the 48-hour period at issue in McFields; several detainees in the proposed No. 23-1312 25 class submitted grievances while awaiting treatment and received responses from Jail o cials stating that appointments for oral surgery “can take 90 days or more.” Scott has also presented evidence showing that high-up o cials in the Jail’s dental sta knew that the lack of an on-site oral surgeon caused detainees to su er signi cant delays, worsening medical conditions, and gratuitous pain. In 2011, the Jail’s Chief of Dental Services submitted a budget request practically begging the County to hire an oral surgeon to address the “constant[] su er[ing]” of detainees who waited “anywhere from 2 to 3[] months to be treated” at Stroger Hospital. And in 2016, the Jail’s Director of Oral Health stated in an email that the Jail was “in DESPERATE need for a part-time oral surgeon” (emphasis in original). Thus, the central question in this litigation is whether, based on this evidence, the County’s decision not to hire an oral surgeon is objectively unreasonable for any detainee who has a professionally identi ed need for oral surgery. We have distinguished between challenges to con nement conditions that allege gross and systemic de ciencies (which may proceed on a classwide basis) and those that allege individual claims of inadequate medical care (which may not). For example, in Phillips v. Sheri of Cook County, we a rmed the district court’s denial of class certi cation where “proof of a systemic practice” that “would lead to a nding that all detainees are e ectively denied treatment” was absent, yet we noted that “Cook County’s decision to sta the Jail with only one dentist might re ect a common policy of systemic deliberate indi erence.” 828 F.3d 541, 557–58 (7th Cir. 2016) (cleaned up) (distinguishing Parsons v. Ryan, 754 F.3d 657, 676 (9th Cir. 2014)). And in Orr, we found commonality among a class of inmates who alleged that they received inadequate 26 No. 23-1312 medical care where “the speci ed policies and practices to which all … inmates are subjected … are the ‘glue’ that holds together the putative class; either each of the policies and practices is unlawful as to every inmate or it is not.” 953 F.3d at 499–500 (quotation and alterations omitted). Moreover, the district court overlooked the fact that, unlike in McFields, the proposed class in this case is narrowly de ned to limit the e ect of any variation between its members. In McFields, we explained why the variation among the proposed class members’ experiences “matter[ed] immensely” for purposes of commonality: Suppose a detainee submits [a written complaint] of a toothache in the morning and is treated by a worldclass dentist that afternoon. Or imagine that, for some reason, a perfectly healthy detainee falsely indicates extreme pain on his [complaint]. Both would fall comfortably into McFields’s proposed class so long as neither was given a face-to-face assessment before receiving dental treatment, but obviously, these would-be plainti s have su ered no injury and have no colorable constitutional claim. 982 F.3d at 517. These concerns are not implicated here. Like Scott, every member of the proposed class of detainees was examined by an on-site dentist who observed a serious medical issue and determined that each detainee required treatment from an oral surgeon. And all the class members experienced delays in receiving that treatment. Thus, “[t]he narrow way in which the district court de ned the class[] here eliminates concern that the de nitions are overbroad or include a great many No. 23-1312 27 people who have su ered no injury.” Pella Corp. v. Saltzman, 606 F.3d 391, 394 (7th Cir. 2010). To be sure, each class member eventually will have to present individualized evidence to show that the harm she suffered was causally related to the inadequate care she received. Individualized evidence may also be used to determine the amount of damages to which each class member is entitled. But we repeatedly have stressed that the common question presented need not resolve every issue in the case. “It is routine in class actions to have a nal phase in which individualized proof [is] submitted.” Suchanek, 764 F.3d at 756. In Bell v. PNC Bank, for example, employees brought a classwide challenge alleging that their former employer had an unlawful, uno cial policy of failing to pay overtime wages. 800 F.3d at 374–79. We found that whether the employer had such an uno cial policy was a common question, even though a later portion of the suit would require assessing damages for each class member on an individualized basis, as damages depended on “how many hours of o -the-clock work each employee worked or the intent of [each employee’s] manager.” Id. at 379. Similarly, in McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., employees brought a classwide challenge to two employment policies that allegedly had a discriminatory impact. 672 F.3d 482, 488–89 (7th Cir. 2012). We observed that “should the claim of disparate impact prevail in the classwide proceeding, hundreds of separate trials may be necessary to determine which class members were actually adversely a ected.” Id. at 491. Yet we found commonality because “at least it wouldn’t be necessary in each of those trials to determine whether the challenged practices were unlawful.” Id. 28 No. 23-1312 The district court’s analysis boils down to the fact that medical care is inherently individualized. But that alone is not enough to preclude class certi cation. The plainti s have taken aim at a speci c policy (i.e., the County’s decision not to keep an oral surgeon at the Jail) that applies equally to all class members, and the plainti s have o ered evidence to show that the challenged policy causes systemic delays across the entire class. That su ces to show commonality. See Suchanek, 764 F.3d at 756 (“Where the same conduct or practice by the same defendant gives rise to the same kind of claims from all class members, there is a common question.”). The district court abused its discretion in concluding otherwise. B. Typicality For similar reasons, the district court erred in concluding that individual variations among the proposed class members destroyed typicality. “[C]ommonality and typicality tend to merge.” Priddy v. Health Care Serv. Corp., 870 F.3d 657, 660 (7th Cir. 2017). Typicality requires that “the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class.” FED. R. CIV. P. 23(a)(3). That requirement may be satis ed “even if there are factual distinctions between the claims of the named plainti s and those of other class members[;]” it “primarily directs the district court to focus on whether the named representatives’ claims have the same essential characteristics as the claims of the class at large.” Muro v. Target Corp., 580 F.3d 485, 492 (7th Cir. 2009) (quoting De La Fuente v. Stokely-Van Camp, Inc., 713 F.2d 225, 232 (7th Cir. 1983)). There is some variation among the claims of the proposed class members in this case. We can see this in the sample of detainee grievances that Scott has presented: the class No. 23-1312 29 members experienced a range of dental issues (e.g., Scott needed his wisdom tooth removed, whereas J.C. needed wires removed from his mouth and T.P. needed a rotten tooth extracted); the class members experienced di erent periods of delay before receiving treatment (e.g., Scott waited nearly 33 weeks, while others waited anywhere between four and 19 weeks); and the class members experienced di erent degrees of pain. But unlike McFields—where the proposed class members included detainees who had submitted complaints of dental pain that had never been vetted by a professional, 982 F.3d at 517—every proposed class member here was evaluated by an on-site dentist who observed a serious medical condition and concluded that treatment from an oral surgeon was necessary. Every proposed class member then experienced a treatment delay that is allegedly attributable to the lack of an on-site oral surgeon. These are the “essential characteristics” that knit the proposed class members together. De La Fuente, 713 F.2d at 232. C. Predominance and Superiority Finally, we address Rule 23(b)(3)’s requirements that common questions of law or fact “predominate” over individual ones and that a class action be “superior to other available methods for fairly and e ciently adjudicating the controversy.” FED. R. CIV. P. 23(b)(3). “The guiding principle behind predominance is whether the proposed class’s claims arise from a common nucleus of operative facts and issues.” Beaton v. SpeedyPC Software, 907 F.3d 1018, 1029 (7th Cir. 2018). “This requires more than a tally of common questions; the district court must consider their relative importance.” Id. 30 No. 23-1312 The district court’s misstep with respect to predominance and superiority ows from the same error we noted earlier: its conclusion that the question whether the County’s decision with respect to an on-site oral surgeon is objectively reasonable could not be answered without individualized assessments. But, as we have explained, that question can be resolved on a classwide basis. And where a common issue exists such that its resolution “‘is unlikely to be enhanced by repeated proceedings, then it makes good sense, especially when the class is so large, to resolve th[at] issue[] in one fell swoop while leaving the remaining, claimant-speci c issues to individual follow-on proceedings.’” Pella Corp., 606 F.3d at 394 (quoting Mejdrech v. Met-Coil Sys. Corp., 319 F.3d 910, 911 (7th Cir. 2003)). The County reminds us that if the class prevails on that common issue, the class members would need to proceed in individualized trials to prove causation and to seek damages. Probably so. But that fact does not necessarily preclude class certi cation. McReynolds, 672 F.3d at 491; Bell, 800 F.3d at 377– 79. If the district court were to determine on the merits that the County’s refusal to sta an oral surgeon at the Jail passes muster, then all the class members’ claims would fail together. If the plainti s prevail on the common issue, it will not need to be revisited in each individual proceeding. That is enough to show predominance and superiority. IV We recognize that Scott’s estimate of the size of the proposed class is quite large—possibly more than 2,000 members. It may be that not every member of the proposed class experienced a delay in treatment that was signi cant enough to amount to the denial of care; it may also be that not every No. 23-1312 31 member of the proposed class submitted a grievance reporting the pain and su ering experienced while awaiting treatment. We have cautioned, however, that “[i]n circumstances such as these, involving minor overbreadth problems that do not call into question the validity of the class as a whole, the better course is not to deny class certi cation entirely but to amend the class de nition as needed to correct for the overbreadth.” Messner v. Northshore Univ. HealthSys., 669 F.3d 802, 826 n.15 (7th Cir. 2012). The district court is free to revise the class de nition as it sees t upon remand to address this issue. We note, too, that the district court did not address whether the proposed class meets Rule 23(a)’s requirements of numerosity and adequacy of representation, which must be satis ed before the class may be certi ed. The parties have not briefed these issues, and so we express no view on them. We therefore VACATE the district court’s order denying class certi cation and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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