Background
Four named plaintiffs sued the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice over periods of detention they alleged continued after they should have been released. The circuit court certified two classes covering people allegedly overdetained by the agencies from 2012 forward. The agencies sought immediate review even though the certification order was interlocutory.
Justice John Few’s opinion first addressed appellate procedure. A class-certification order is not immediately appealable to the court of appeals. The Supreme Court nevertheless may use a common-law writ of certiorari in a rare and exceptional case. The Court found that demanding standard met here because certification threatened sprawling litigation whose central liability questions could not be answered on a classwide basis.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court reversed certification and remanded for discovery and trial only on the four named plaintiffs’ individual claims. Rule 23 requires more than a question phrased at a high level of generality. A proposed common question must be capable of generating an answer that advances the litigation for the class as a whole.
Whether any person was unlawfully detained depended on individualized facts, including the governing sentence, credits, release calculations, warrants, holds, communications, and the conduct of particular officials. Those issues also affected causation and damages. Applying the required rigorous analysis, the Court concluded any common issue was overwhelmed by the numerous person-specific questions a judge and jury would have to decide.
Key Takeaways
- South Carolina class certification requires a genuinely classwide answer, not merely a broadly shared allegation.
- Interlocutory certification orders cannot be appealed directly to the court of appeals; Supreme Court certiorari remains exceptional.
- Claims involving sentence calculations and release dates are especially vulnerable to individualized-proof objections.
Why It Matters
The decision is important for South Carolina lawyers on both sides of institutional-liability cases. Plaintiffs must identify a common mechanism of injury and show how it can be tried without reconstructing every class member’s circumstances. Government defendants now have a forceful state-law roadmap for challenging certification when liability turns on separate records and decisions.
The opinion also supplies practical guidance on review strategy. A party should not treat common-law certiorari as an ordinary substitute for an interlocutory appeal. The Court repeatedly characterized this case as unusual, while making clear that an extraordinary certification order can justify immediate intervention when proceeding as a class would impose consequences that later review could not realistically undo.