In re Franchise Tax Bd. Ltd. Liab. Corp. Tax Refund Cases

*697 *374 This coordinated litigation involves the remedies available to certain limited liability companies (LLCs) that paid a levy pursuant to section 17942 of the Revenue and Taxation Code which was later determined by this District to be unconstitutional. (See Northwest Energetic Services, LLC v. California Franchise Tax Bd. (2008) 159 Cal.App.4th 841 , 71 Cal.Rptr.3d 642 ( Northwest ); Ventas Finance I, LLC v. Franchise Tax Bd. (2008) 165 Cal.App.4th 1207 , 81 Cal.Rptr.3d 823 ( Ventas ).) 1 After two separate actions seeking class treatment for the payment of refund claims were coordinated into this proceeding, the trial court addressed and rejected a jurisdictional argument from the Franchise Tax Board (FTB) that the LLCs had failed to adequately exhaust their administrative remedies as a class and thus could not proceed on a classwide basis. The court, however, went on to deny the motion for class certification before it on multiple other grounds, including lack of ascertainability, numerosity, predominance, and superiority. While we agree with the trial court's exhaustion determination, we believe its class certification analysis was fundamentally flawed. Indeed, we deem…