Background
Plaintiffs, including Cherry Rider and the Lucas family, filed a putative class action against Oxy USA, Inc. and Merit Energy Company, LLC. The dispute arose from a 2008 settlement agreement in a prior case, Littell v. OXY USA, Inc., which limited deductions from royalty payments for gas produced in the Kansas Hugoton Gas Field. Merit acquired Oxy’s assets in 2014 and allegedly began taking improper deductions from royalty payments to owners who were parties to the original settlement or their successors. The district court denied class certification, finding the class was not ascertainable and that Plaintiffs failed to meet other Rule twenty-three requirements.
The court’s reasoning
The Court of Appeals reviewed the district court’s denial de novo. The court held that under its recent decision in Cline v. Sunoco, the ascertainability requirement does not demand administrative feasibility. Instead, a class is ascertainable if it is defined clearly and objectively, allowing identification with reasonable accuracy. The court found the class definition here was objective and that Merit could identify payees from its records. The court further determined that common questions of law, such as whether the settlement bound Merit and whether it breached the agreement, predominated over individual issues regarding ownership tracing. The need for individualized damages calculations does not defeat predominance. Consequently, the district court abused its discretion in denying certification.
We conclude that the class is ascertainable and that nothing in the class definition dissuades us from certifying the class.
Rider v. Oxy USA, Inc., No. 25-3142 (10th Cir. May 5, 2026)
What it means going forward
The decision remands the case to the district court with instructions to certify the putative class. This allows the breach of contract claims regarding royalty deductions to proceed as a class action, shifting the burden to the defendants to manage the identification of class members through their existing business records rather than requiring individual title searches at the certification stage.
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