The district court has not determined facts, from the often conflicting evidence, sufficient to determine whether class certification is or is not appropriate. As we have noted, a district court must make the necessary factual and legal inquiries and decide all relevant contested issues prior to certification. Here the district court refused to conduct a Daubert-like critique of the proffered experts’s qualifications. The Plaintiffs are required to prove, at the class certification stage, more than just a prima facie case, i.e., more than just a pretty good case. It was error for the district court to decline to declare a proverbial, yet tentative winner. Here, in its Rule 23 analysis, we find that the district court erred as a matter of law by not sufficiently evaluating and weighing conflicting expert testimony on class certification. The Eleventh Circuit– in an opinion not designated for publication–reversed the trial court. It certified the proposed class, and left the Daubert question for trial. T is not necessary at this stage of the litigation to declare a proverbial winner in the parties’ war of the battling experts or dueling statistics and chemical concentrations Raytheon put up its own experts, who argued that plaintiffs’ method of defining the affected area was not consistent with "applicable professional standards," and that their expert’s statistical method was unsound as well. The plaintiffs put up an expert who testified that he could construct a statistical model that would demonstrate liability and damages on a classwide basis. A group of Florida landowners sued Raytheon Company, accusing it of contaminating their groundwater by improperly disposing of hazardous waste.
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