Civil procedure gone awry. Twelve mortgage loan officers claimed that Citizens Bank forced them—and more than a thousand of their colleagues—to work over forty hours a week without paying them the overtime they were due. They filed a single complaint bringing a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and parallel state law claims that they wished to pursue as a class action under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The District Court scheduled a trial on the primary factual issue in the FLSA opt-in collective action but left unresolved whether it would certify a class for the state law opt-out Rule 23 action. Citizens objected to that procedural order of business. The District Court essentially ignored Citizens’ objections. With a trial date looming, Citizens filed a petition in the Third Circuit for a writ of mandamus. In this dense opinion, the Third Circuit held that the District Court erred when it scheduled a trial on the primary factual issue in an FLSA opt-in collective action but left unresolved whether it would certify a class for a state law opt-out Rule 23 action. The Court opined that the District Court’s trial-before-certification approach ignored Rule 23’s text and history, disregarded Supreme Court precedent, and departed from the caselaw of seven circuits while undercutting four others.