Once a settlement has been reached in an FLSA collective action, the defendant-employer typically wants that settlement to go into effect and end the case as soon as possible, so that the company can get past the myriad of distractions brought by the suit. However, as litigants increasingly are finding, the parties’ agreement to settle an FLSA collective action is nowhere near the end of the road, or the end of the case. There is a “judicial prohibition” against the unsupervised waiver or settlement of claims brought under the FLSA. Settlements must be “supervised” by the Department of Labor or a court, and gone are the days where the court would rubberstamp the parties’ FLSA collective action settlement agreement. Instead, courts nowadays are scrutinizing the settlement to ensure the “fairness” of the agreement.

A recent decision by District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland describes the information that courts are requiring parties to provide in their settlement agreements and accompanying motions for approval of the settlement. In Lane v. Ko-Me, LLC, Judge Chasanow rejected the parties’ motion for approval of their FLSA settlement, finding the parties’ joint motion for approval to be “clearly deficient” in setting forth facts or arguments upon which the court could evaluate the fairness of the agreement. The Lane decision is helpful in providing a roadmap as to what parties may want to consider including in their submissions to the court seeking approval of an FLSA collective action settlement...