Wage and hour claims will create the most monetary exposure for employers in 2013, followed closely by claims of age discrimination, retaliation and racial discrimination, according to a new survey of in-house counsel.
Of the 392 corporate attorneys surveyed by the law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, 40 percent named wage and hour claims as one of the three types of claims to which their companies are most vulnerable. Another 28 percent cited age discrimination, followed by 22 percent who cited retaliation and 21 percent who cited racial discrimination.
Wage and hour also was the area of law in which the most respondents (43 percent) reported the greatest increase in multi-plaintiff cases, followed by race (14 percent), sex (9 percent), age (7 percent) and others.
The most common types of claims filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act involved overtime (64 percent), misclassification (45 percent) and meal and/or rest breaks (31 percent), according to the survey.
