Nalick

I.

INTRODUCTION

In June 2017, Nalick filed the operative second amended complaint (SAC) on behalf of a putative class of purchasers of defendant Seagate Technology LLP’s (Seagate) three-terabyte hard disk drives bearing model No. ST3000DM001 (the Drives). In November 2017, the trial court granted in part Nalick’s motion for class certification—certifying only as to CLRA and UCL claims based on Seagate’s alleged omissions of the Drives’ failure rates. Regarding predominance, the court ruled that Seagate’s knowledge of the Drives’ annual failure rates (AFR), reasonable consumers’ expectations of the Drives’ failure rates, and the Drives’ actual AFRs were all susceptible to common proof. Despite lacking evidence of the Drives’ actual AFRs, the court reasoned Nalick “may be able to demonstrate that whatever the failure rate was—and by definition, there was some failure rate, there always is—it was sufficiently high that consumers should have been alerted to it.” After the ruling, the parties stipulated the class and subclass definitions. In April 2019, the trial court denied a motion by Seagate for summary adjudication, but later granted Seagate’s motion for reconsideration and…