Kids and Pets Left in Vehicles: Louisiana Legislature Makes Rescuers Immune, Maybe

Almost no litigation grabs attention and headlines more than a high-profile class action. The Louisiana Supreme Court's recent class action ruling was no exception in a case involving salacious conduct and a violation of privacy.

The plaintiff in Jane Doe v. Southern Gyms, LLC, 2012-1566 (La. 3/19/13) was an unnamed victim of a "peeping tom." She contended that an employee of a popular gym placed a pen camera in the women's bathroom where he would tape unsuspecting women in various states of undress. The pen camera could hold only 1-2 hours of film. The perpetrator testified that, after viewing, he would immediately delete the footage. The images of only four women were seen on the footage when it was discovered. After the employee was arrested, one of the victims filed the class action lawsuit. At issue before the Louisiana Supreme Court was whether the class action was properly certified by the Trial Court.

Class action is a nontraditional litigation procedure that was introduced into Louisiana civil procedure in 1961. Louisiana class action procedure is modeled after the original federal rule and has been extensively revised since its inception. Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure Article 591 provides the elements that must be met before a class action can be certified. Failure to meet one of the threshold requirements of Article 591 precludes class action treatment. Once of these threshold requirements is numerosity, i.e. a class of potential plaintiffs "so numerous that joinder of all members is impractical." La. C.C.P. art. 591(a)(1). The requirement of numerosity was at issue in Jane Doe.

In its analysis, the Supreme Court stressed that courts must perform a rigorous analysis to determine whether the proposed class action meets the requirements of Article 591. Simply pleading a class action is insufficient. Instead, the plaintiff "must be prepared to prove in fact" that the Article 591 requirements are met. Id. at p. 9. To establish the "numerosity" requirement, the class representative cannot simply allege that several persons were affected by the defendant's bad acts. She must be able to offer some proof of a definable group of aggrieved persons so numerous that joinder is impractical.

In Jane Doe, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiff did not satisfy numerosity. The employee's testimony revealed that he may have recorded approximately 20 women. However, because the footage was deleted, most of the potential class members could not show that their privacy had been violated. Only nine women had positive knowledge that they were on video. According to the Jane Doe Court, nine class members did not meet the numerosity requirement and the class was decertified. While the Court did not reveal a "magic number" to meet numerosity, we now know it may be higher than nine.

There is an old adage that "bad facts make bad law." In Jane Doe, the Louisiana Supreme Court did not let the egregious nature of the conduct impact its view that the requirements of Article 591 must be met in every circumstance.

What happens when someone leaves money in a will to a charity that has closed its doors by the time the will is probated? In this strange circumstance, a court may apply the “cy pres doctrine” to answer this question. Cy pres is a French term which loosely translates to mean “as near as possible.” In modern litigation, cy pres is not only used to distribute charitable donations, but also to distribute millions of dollars left over in class action settlements.

In the example above, a court may use cy pres to transfer the donated money to a charity similar to the one that had shut down. In class actions, there are often funds left over when not enough people register to receive money under a settlement. In this situation, the court will use cy pres to decide where this money goes; but that decision is a tricky one. Courts will sometimes direct these funds to a governmental entity loosely related to what the lawsuit was about. Other times these funds will go to a charity. Whatever the choice, there are usually complaints.

In one case, a nationwide class of AOL customers agreed to a settlement in a class action filed in California. Even though class members lived all over the country, the cy pres funds went to a legal aid office in Los Angeles, where the judge’s husband served as a director. This raised some eyebrows.

In another case, Kellogg’s settled a class action filed because its advertisements claimed that frosted mini-wheats improved kids’ brain power, which -sadly- turned out not to be true. Those cy pres funds initially went to a charity designed to feed the poor. However, the court later ruled that the funds should have gone to a group that protected the public from false advertising.

As more and more cases like these garnered attention, rules were passed as to how to distribute these funds. Generally, these rules require some connection between the issues in the lawsuit and the mission of the group that gets the funds. While the United States Supreme Court has yet to address these issues, Chief Justice Roberts recently indicated that the Court may be ready to put its stamp on cy pres.

We may be “as near as possible” to some clarity in the murky law of cy pres.

On June 27, 2025, in an Opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the United States Supreme Court determined that “universal injunctions,” injunctions issued by district judges that apply nationwide, “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” In Trump v. CASA, Inc., the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 vote, concluded that district courts do not have authority to issue universal injunctions which seek to prohibit the enforcement of a law or policy against anyone nationwide. The decision limits the relief afforded by the district courts in consolidated matters to only the parties in those actions.

By prohibiting the use of “universal injunctions” in federal courts, litigants already have started to utilize another procedure to seek the relief they seek – class actions. Class actions are a special procedure provided by both federal and state law that allows one or more class representatives to file suit and seek to represent the interests of other similarly situated individuals or companies. Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA, Inc., a single litigant could apply for a universal injunction through an individual action. Now that the Supreme Court has declared that process unavailable for application of an injunction nationwide, class actions may be the procedural process litigants attempt to use to achieve that same purpose. It remains to be seen whether class actions will be an effective way to achieve broader relief for individuals impacted by government policies.

References:

Trump v. CASA, Inc., --- S.Ct. ---, No. 24A884, 2025 WL 1773631 (U.S. June 27, 2025).