One of the difficulties of class action litigation that continues to vex employers is the frequent inability to obtain meaningful review of certification decisions. Because, the reasoning goes, certification orders are...more
If you have Amazon Prime, you get free delivery in two business days. If you want to pay extra (whether Amazon Prime or not), you can get your order the next day. So how long does it take for Amazon to get rid of a case the...more
We’ve commented on numerous occasions about the peculiar paths taken by wage and hour class litigation, particularly with respect to collective actions under the FLSA. Two cases involving the same employer decided only days...more
A recent case reflects that some courts will look not only to the presence or absence of conflicts or litigation misconduct but also to the plaintiffs’ counsel’s experience in other class action cases.
In Goers v. L.A....more
We’ve written many times in this blog about the two-step procedure used by many courts in Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) cases in collective actions. The first step is to provide notice to the proposed class and is typically...more
Subway is one of the largest franchisors in the world, with over 26,000 restaurants in the United States alone. It is also in one of the industries most prone to wage and hour claims, a fact reflected in both Department of...more
“As far as overtime, you (like I) can only bill a 40hr work week even though we put in like 60hrs at times.”
This isn’t exactly the email you want to see if you are defending an off-the-clock wage and hour claim, but...more
Statistics are kind of a holy grail of class action litigation. Everyone seems to know that they exist, but their understanding is shadowy and the quest to find valid statistical models often proves elusive. Last month’s...more
Litigation Over Interns Dries Up Internship Opportunities -
The natural and probable consequence of litigation over unpaid internships was that such opportunities would disappear because the risk of litigation for even...more
4/6/2016
/ Class Action ,
Class Certification ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
FRCP 23 ,
Gawker ,
Minimum Wage ,
Social Media ,
Summary Judgment ,
Unpaid Interns ,
Unpaid Overtime ,
Wage and Hour
Is the saying “fish or cut bait” dead? If you are ever in need of sleep, pull out your copy of the U.S. Code and traipse through the exemptions contained in section 13 of the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. § 213. We’re all familiar with the...more
It is almost an axiom that the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq., passed in 1938, is out of date. Despite modest tweaks since the time it was enacted, a particularly dark time in the Great Depression, it is...more
Because of the low standard employed by many courts, decisions denying conditional certification in FLSA cases are generally in the minority, but some careful courts will continue to make such decisions. A recent case is...more
It’s hard enough to predict what the Supreme Court will do on a given case even after it has been briefed and oral argument has been heard. It’s even harder when all we have is the decision accepting certiorari, but this one...more
6/11/2015
/ Calculation of Damages ,
Certiorari ,
Class Action ,
Class Certification ,
Collective Actions ,
Damages ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ,
FRCP 23(b)(3) ,
SCOTUS ,
Tyson Foods ,
Tyson Foods v Bouaphakeo ,
Wage and Hour
Security screening has become more common over the past decade, both to promote security for some employers and to deter employee theft for others. A growing issue in wage and hour law, at least until this morning, was...more
Whenever I see the names of the Iqbal and Twombly pleading cases, I can’t help but feel that the names were clipped from lost lines of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem, perhaps as something similar to “Iqbal were the Civil...more
In Mark v. Gawker Media LLC, Case No. 13-cv-4347(AJN) (S.D. N.Y. Aug. 15, 2014), Gawker became the subject of yet another in a line of cases involving unpaid interns. Four interns brought suit under the FLSA, contending that...more
My working title for this blog was “collective action grab bag,” concerning the recent Sixth Circuit case in Killion v. KeHE Distributors, LLC, Case Nos. 12-3357/4340 (6th Cir. July 31, 2014). I went with the title that...more
8/11/2014
/ Arbitration ,
Arbitration Agreements ,
Class Action Arbitration Waivers ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Interlocutory Appeals ,
Jurisdiction ,
Retailers ,
Unpaid Overtime ,
Wage and Hour
While the number of class or collective action lawsuits has exploded, decisions from Circuit Courts of Appeal, particularly on procedural issues, are still infrequent enough to warrant comment. In Pippins v. KPMG, Case No....more
A month ago we discussed the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Ruiz v. Affinity Logistics Corp., Case No. 12-56589 (9th Cir. June 16, 2014), in which the employer treated its delivery drivers as employees in everything but name,...more
Relatively few FLSA cases are certified and then reach a court of appeals on the merits, but that recently happened before the Eight Circuit. In Petroski v. H&R Block Enterprises, LLC, Case No. 13-2076 (8th Cir. May 2, 2014),...more
Plaintiffs in most class and collective actions try to plead their claims in such a way as to exert the maximum pressure against the employer. In some instances, that raises the issue of whether the plaintiff should assert...more
Last week, the Supreme Court decided the case of Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., Case No. 12-417 (Jan. 27, 2014), addressing donning and doffing claims in the context of a unionized steel mill. That case not only...more
Without settlements, class action litigation would likely grind the work of our nation’s courts to a halt. One impediment, however, to settlement in many cases is the amount of attorney fees. Particularly in smaller cases, or...more
In a number of cases, the plaintiffs’ strategy in collective active litigation under the Fair Labor Standards Act may fall into a familiar pattern: file the case, do minimal discovery, move for conditional certification under...more
Despite blockbuster cases like Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), and Brinker Rest. Corp. v. Superior Court, 273 P.3d 513, 527 (Cal. 2012), California remains a hotbed of employment class litigation as a...more