For years, litigation under the Fair Labor Standards Act has grown exponentially. In 2018 there were 8,824 FLSA lawsuits filed, in contrast with only 3,496 in 2008. A leading factor driving this trend is the near automatic...more
Good news for at least some employers facing Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective actions. In Clark v. A&L Home Care and Training Center et al., the 6th Circuit adopted a new standard for collective action conditional...more
Seyfarth Synopsis. Businesses familiar with FLSA litigation are aware of the frustrating ease with which some courts have turned single-plaintiff cases into large-scale collective action proceedings. But the tides are...more
The certification process for FLSA collective actions has typically been a two-step process. The first step is to secure conditional certification, which is often handed out as easily as a Santa Claus giving kids candy at...more
A federal district court located within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has adopted the heightened standard for certification of a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In what could become a trend, Judge T.S. Ellis, III recently broke with other courts in the Eastern District of Virginia when he rejected the two-step conditional certification process commonly used in FLSA...more
Here’s a novel approach: What if you have an “off the clock” case where the court disfavors certification? Can you simply tack them onto claims in another pending class action lawsuit?...more
In a provocative decision in the case known as Swales v. KLLM Transport Servs., L.L.C., No. 19-60847 (5th Cir. 2021), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit broke from the pack by upending the standard two-step...more
In a decision of considerable significance in the world of wage and hour litigation, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit significantly departed from conventional standards for assessing conditional...more
I have often lamented how easy it seems for plaintiffs to secure conditional certification in a FLSA collective action. A few Affidavits, often identical in content, are produced and then, voila, the plaintiff gets...more
As many readers of this blog know, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) allows employees to sue for overtime and minimum wage violations on behalf of themselves and those “similarly situated” in a “collective action.” FLSA...more
A groundbreaking ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit threatens to upend decades of federal court practice concerning the management of collective actions brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act. ...more
It seems that plaintiffs (and their lawyers) think that all they have to do to get conditional certification is throw up a flimsy Affidavit from the named plaintiff and the Court will hand them conditional certification, like...more
We’ve noted many times that while employees prevail on most motions for conditional certification under the FLSA, employers tend to prevail on the second stage motion for decertification. ...more
It is fairly easy for a plaintiff to get conditional certification in a FLSA class action case, but that is not the end of the story. The next step, much harder, is fending off the defendant’s anticipated motion to stop the...more
Many times, plaintiff lawyers will try to file FLSA class actions as nationwide lawsuits so the size of the class and potential recovery can be magnified geometrically. Well, that just got a little harder to do as a federal...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Furthering a recent trend, a judge in the District of Massachusetts denied a motion for conditional certification because there was no personal jurisdiction over non-Massachusetts entities with respect to...more
In collective actions under the FLSA, courts typically apply a lower standard to the first “conditional certification” stage. ...more
The whole trick for a plaintiff (and his lawyers) in a FLSA collective action case is to try to get conditional certification. Once that happens, the stakes automatically escalate for the defendant-employer, often leaving...more
We’ve noted before that while conditional certification motions are often granted, such classes fare far less well at the second decertification stage and just as poorly on the eve of trial....more
A New York federal court once again denied a motion for conditional certification of a nationwide collective action against Barnes & Noble. ...more
A district court in the Eastern District of Louisiana refused to conditionally certify a class of employees who accused their employer of intentionally underpaying and reducing hours from time records to avoid paying overtime...more
Deceptive Trade Practices - Meat Exporter Had No Duty Under FCA to Pay for Beef Inspection - In United States ex rel. Barrick v. Parker-Migliorini Int'l, LLC, 878 F. 3d 1224 (10th Cir. 2017), the court affirmed...more
In its November 17, 2017 opinion in Galindo v. East County Louth, Inc. (No. 16 Civ. 9149), the Southern District of New York denied a motion to approve an individual FLSA settlement, including on the ground that the...more
As we’ve noted before, many courts have applied the standard for conditional certification so leniently that in places the requirement of a group of “similarly situated” employees under the FLSA has all but disappeared. So,...more