Anyone questioning whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), has had an impact need look no further than the decision in Alakozai v. Chase Investment Services Corp., Case...more
Employees win most motions for conditional certification under the FLSA, with many courts declining to perform a probing analysis at that stage. A recent case from the District of Minnesota, in which the court still applied a...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
Off-the-clock cases involving call centers have been in vogue for a number of years despite lingering issues regarding whether they can truly be resolved on a class-wide basis. A recent case from the District of Maryland,...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
“Depending on the nature of the claimed exemption and the facts of a particular case, a misclassification claim has the potential to raise numerous individual questions that may be difficult, or even impossible, to litigate...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
We’ve written at least twice now on class actions arising out of time spent by employees going through security lines, primarily at the end of their shifts. The question is whether and when such time might be compensable...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
Back in October, we reviewed a number of California cases that, for the most part, denied certification in cases in which certification would have largely been a foregone conclusion only a few years ago. The first few days of...more
One can only imagine the outcome the plaintiffs' attorneys were anticipating: a case against the financial industry, involving non-exempt employees subject to an auto-deduct policy for meal periods, in the Southern District...more
When is a “service charge” a tip? And who gets it, the employer or the employee? These aren’t just questions of etiquette, but are now serious issues for the restaurant and tourism sector in Hawaii....more
I had a smart aleck friend who tried to come up with the Starbucks coffee order that had the greatest number of syllables. I can’t remember the winning combination, but it definitely had the words “half-caf” and “cinnamon”,...more
Dorothy Gale famously remarked upon finding herself in Oz “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Class action wage and hour plaintiffs on the west coast are now awakening to the fact that while they may still...more
7/12/2013
/ American Express ,
American Express v Italian Colors Restaurant ,
Arbitration ,
AT&T Mobility v Concepcion ,
Class Action ,
Collective Actions ,
Collective Bargaining ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Ernst & Young ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
NLRB ,
SCOTUS ,
Wage and Hour
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again,” or so the adage goes. A recent case suggests that may not always be the right strategy or, more apropos to this blog, that off-the-clock cases make poor fodder for class...more
In some respects, one of the most difficult types of wage and hours lawsuits are so-called “off-the-clock” cases in which the employer has promulgated lawful time-keeping and compensation policies, but the plaintiffs contend...more
We’ve commented before that while most courts apply a fairly lenient standard at the “conditional certification” phase of Fair Labor Standards Act collective action litigation, plaintiffs tend to have a harder time in...more
What do you do if you if you want to cash in on the recent flood of wage and hour class and collective actions, but the employer’s policies are actually lawful?...more