The Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders case in 1977 revolved around the issue of who should bear the cost for identifying and notifying potential members of a class action lawsuit under Rule 23(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Supreme Court held that such costs should be borne by plaintiffs unless there are reasons to distribute them differently based on equitable considerations or directives within Rule 23 itself. In this particular case, shareholders brought a securities fraud class action against Oppenheimer Fund, Inc., and others involved with managing an investment company's portfolio. They sought reimbursement from defendants for expenses incurred while identifying potential claimants and disseminating notice about the suit among those identified as part of their discovery process - which included computer programming services to extract names from defendant’s electronic records.

In the dissenting opinion for Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders et al., Justice William Rehnquist disagreed with the majority's interpretation of Rule 23(e) of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which governs class action lawsuits. He argued that this rule should not be used to compel a defendant in a lawsuit to create a list of names and addresses if such list does not already exist in its records. According to him, creating such lists would impose an undue burden on defendants and could potentially infringe upon their rights under the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. Furthermore, he contended that requiring defendants to bear these costs was inconsistent with traditional principles governing discovery procedures where each party typically bears its own expenses unless ordered otherwise by court due to misconduct or other exceptional circumstances.