Dillard, Presiding Judge. Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC sued Westley Cagle to collect payment on an allegedly delinquent credit card debt. Cagle filed an answer and counterclaims, asserting a class action on behalf of similarly situated debtors that PRA had sued. Following a hearing, the trial court denied Cagle’s motion for class certification. Cagle now appeals, contending the trial court erred in finding that he failed to satisfy the numerosity requirement for class certification and in addressing the underlying merits of his claims. For the following reasons, we affirm. The record shows that in 2000, Cagle opened a credit-card account with Sears National Bank. And in 2003, Sears sold its entire credit-card portfolio to Citibank, N. A., and so Citibank then became the creditor on Cagle’s account despite him never applying for an account with Citibank. Nonetheless, by December 2011, Cagle was unable to pay all of the balance owed, and his account became delinquent. PRA is a company that purchases defaulted debts from various creditors—at a significant discount from the face value of the debt—and then attempts to collect that debt from those account holders. In 2012, PRA purchased Cagle’s debt from Citibank, and on September 13, 2013, it filed a lawsuit in the Magistrate Court of Talbot County against him to collect the debt, which it claimed totaled $1,696.17. And with its complaint, PRA filed an affidavit from one of its records custodians, who stated that a review of the relevant records confirmed the delinquent balance on Cagle’s account. Initially, Cagle failed to timely answer, and the magistrate court entered a default against him. But on October 29, 2013, Cagle filed an answer and a class-action counterclaim, alleging PRA sued him without investigating his debt and that the form affidavit claiming his account was reviewed was deceptive. And with his answer, Cagle also filed a motion to open the default, which the trial court granted the following day. Additionally, he moved to transfer the case to the superior court, which the magistrate court granted, agreeing with him that the claims exceeded its jurisdiction. A lengthy discovery period then ensued. But by April 2017, neither party was satisfied with the other’s responses, and so both parties filed motions to compel. Then, on April 24, 2017, Cagle filed a motion to extend the class-certification deadline. After more delays, the trial court held a hearing on July 9, 2018, and ultimately, on November 23, 2020, it ordered Cagle to supplement his discovery responses and further define what he meant by the “form affidavit” referenced in his counterclaim. But in supplemental responses to PRA’s discovery requests (served on December 23, 2020), Cagle objected to many of the requests and otherwise responded that he had been unable to locate any responsive documents to many of the requests. Nevertheless, on March 8, 2021, Cagle filed a motion for class certification. Specifically, he moved for certification of a class defined as follows: All Georgia citizens who, within the applicable statute of limitations preceding the filing of this counterclaim to the date of the class certification, have been sued by [PRA] and where [PRA] submitted a form affidavit or declaration attesting to facts about the underlying debt even though the affiant did not have the requisite personal knowledge or review the relevant records. In his motion, Cagle claimed PRA filed over 39,500 lawsuits to collect debts in Georgia during the class period and that a sampling of those cases showed it routinely used the form affidavit referenced above. In support, Cagle attached a list that included 2,000 of the case captions of actions filed by PRA and six of the form affidavits, which he asserted exemplified PRA’s use of misleading information. PRA filed a response, and the trial court held a hearing on the matter. Then, on December 6, 2021, the trial court denied Cagle’s motion for class certification, ruling that he “failed to provide any evidence or proof towards the numerosity requirement,” and so it “need not consider the other elements of class certification.” This appeal follows.[1] A class action is an exception to the usual rule that litigation is “conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only, and consistent with its exceptional nature, a class action is permitted only in the limited circumstances described in OCGA § 9-11-23.”[2] And the party seeking to represent a class “bears the burden of proving that class certification is appropriate,”[3] which first entails “establishing that the prerequisites of OCGA § 9-11-23 (a) have been satisfied, those being (1) numerosity, (2) commonality, (3) typicality, and (4) adequacy.”[4] If the plaintiff fails to meet even one of the threshold requirements of OCGA § 91123 (a), there is “no need to consider any of the other requirements of the statute, and the request for certification must fail.”[5] Importantly, in order to satisfy these requirements, it is “not enough for the plaintiffs simply to have alleged that they were satisfied.”[6] Rather, the plaintiffs must come forward with “evidence to prove their satisfaction of the statutory requirements.”[7] Additionally, in reviewing the trial court’s order granting or denying class certification, we will “consider the factual findings as adopted by the trial court and affirm them unless clearly erroneous, and we will review the conclusions of law for an abuse of discretion.”[8] But needless to say, any exercise of that discretion “must comport with the statutory requirements.”[9] Indeed, the certification of a class is appropriate only to the extent the trial court is “satisfied, after a rigorous analysis, that the statutory requirements have been satisfied.”[10] And as the Supreme Court of the United States has explained, “[f]requently that rigorous analysis will entail some overlap with the merits of the plaintiff’s underlying claim,” which “cannot be helped” because the “class determination generally involves considerations that are enmeshed in the factual and legal issues comprising the plaintiff’s cause of action.”[11] Bearing these guiding principles in mind, we turn to Cagle’s claims of error. 1. Cagle first contends the trial court erred in finding that he failed to satisfy the numerosity requirement for class certification. We disagree. Suffice it to say, numerosity is the threshold factor to consider in determining whether a class can be certified— “the sine qua non for class actions.”[12] And upon a finding that the “numerousness” of parties makes it “impracticable without great delay and other inconveniences to join them all, which would obstruct and probably defeat the purposes of justice, the trial court may consider whether it represents a proper case to proceed as a class action.”[13] Importantly, in outlining a plaintiff’s burden in this regard, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has explained that “although mere allegations of numerosity are insufficient to meet this prerequisite, a plaintiff need not show the precise number of members in the class.”[14] But even so, a plaintiff still bears the burden of “making some showing, affording the [trial] court the means to make a supported factual finding, that the class actually certified meets the numerosity requirement.”[15] Indeed, explained more bluntly by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, “[m]ere speculation as to the number of class members—even if such speculation is a bet worth making—cannot support a finding of numerosity.”[16] Here, Cagle’s evidence in support of the numerosity requirement consisted of an affidavit from his legal counsel, claiming PRA had filed over 39,500 lawsuits in Georgia to collect debts during the class period. And this affidavit included a list with 2,000 case captions of actions filed by PRA and six of the form affidavits, which he asserted exemplified PRA’s use of such documents despite the affiant not actually having any personal knowledge regarding the accounts at issue. But as the trial court aptly noted in its order, Cagle failed to provide any evidence the six form affidavits contained misleading information or that the affiants had no knowledge regarding the accounts, or if the affiants had not reviewed them (as he alleged), or if the debtors suffered any damages as a result of PRA using such affidavits. Additionally, the trial court further noted PRA provided evidence that—for at least four of Cagle’s sample affidavits—the affiant did, in fact, have personal knowledge based on reviewing the account at issue, thus belying Cagle’s contention regarding the validity of those affidavits. The only conclusion, then, that can be drawn from the evidence Cagle presented to the trial court is that the number of class members would be equal to or less than 39,496 and equal to or greater than zero. But when a putative class is “some subset of a larger pool, the trial court may not infer numerosity from the number in the larger pool alone.”[17] Given these circumstances, Cagle failed to satisfy the numerosity requirement, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying his motion for class certification on this ground.[18] 2. Cagle also contends the trial court erred in addressing the underlying merits of his claims. Nevertheless, given our holding in Division 1 supra, that Cagle failed to satisfy the numerosity requirement in OCGA § 9-11-23 (a), we need not address this argument.[19] For all these reasons, we affirm the trial court’s denial of Cagle’s motion for class certification. Judgment affirmed. Rickman, C. J., and Pipkin J., concur.
