The Seventh Circuit held that the plaintiffs' proposed class definition, "all persons separated from hourly employment...who were subject to [defendant's] vacation policy and who did not receive all earned vacation pay" described an improper class, as: (1) a person who qualified as member of plaintiffs' class depended on whether said person had valid claim; and (2) such a "fail safe" class is impermissible because a class member either wins a case or, by virtue of losing case, is defined out of the class and would not be bound by the District Court's judgment.
Furthermore, Plaintiffs' alternative definition, which removed the reference to the class member's failure to receive vacation pay, did not satisfy class action requirements under Rule 23, since plaintiffs failed to identify any unlawful conduct on defendant's part that was common to the entire proposed class and had caused all of the class members to suffer the same injury.