On December 17, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit handed down its published opinion in Stafford v. Bojangles’ Restaurants, Inc., 2024 WL 5131108 (4th Cir. 2024). In a rare move, the Fourth...more
Class Certification Recipe Needs More Flavor: The Fourth Circuit tossed out a class certification order for Bojangles’ shift managers, citing a high level of generality in identifying common policies and overly broad class...more
On January 3, 2024, the defendant in Heppard v. Dunham’s Athleisure Corporation filed an interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, arguing that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District...more
Court also holds that arbitrability questions must be resolved by the arbitrator - The 10th Circuit has decided two significant issues in an otherwise garden-variety off-the-clock case, one relating to arbitration and the...more
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark opinion in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017), a question arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective actions is...more
When a company faces a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action there are two main components to address: (1)You Can’t Put the Trial Cart Before the Certification Horse in FLSA Hybrid Wage-and-Hour Case; Circuit...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Plaintiffs asserting federal and state wage and hour claims in one action often pursue both class certification of state claims under Rule 23 and collective action certification under the FLSA. In that...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In an important decision for employers, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the all-too lenient but commonly accepted Lusardi standard for conditional certification under the FLSA. In its place, the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Second Circuit has held that the standard for final FLSA collective action certification is less stringent than the standard for class action certification under Rule 23....more
In a significant victory for employers and the principles of due process, the District of Minnesota recently joined several other federal courts around the country in holding that only workers with a connection to the forum...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: As detailed in our 2020 Workplace Class Action Litigation Report, 2019 was an interesting year for employers in terms of class certification rulings. Plaintiffs achieved the highest numbers of initial...more
Welcome back to the Class Action & MDL Roundup! Our spring edition covers notable class actions from the first quarter of 2019. There was a veritable traffic jam in the courts for the automotive industry. Manufacturers saw...more
Are you my employee? Ayanna is working as an IT consultant at Globo Worldwide, part of a large team brought on to assist the e-commerce company in updating its website and email servers for EU General Data Protection...more
In Reinig v. RBS Citizens, N.A., a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a district court’s decision certifying a class of mortgage loan officers (“MLOs”) who claimed they were...more
In a very interesting and off-beat decision, the Third Circuit has thrown out one class of loan officers who alleged misclassification but let stand the lower court’s decision that certified the case as a collective action...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: At 852 pages, Seyfarth’s 15th Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report analyzes 1,453 rulings and is our most comprehensive Report ever. ...more
Ruling also touches upon FLSA conditional certification order - Many wage and hour cases filed today try to name popular targets and to rely upon tried and true allegations....more
A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit has struck down U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab’s decision granting class certification in a suit brought by mortgage loan officers claiming they were denied overtime pay by their...more
On December 12, Proskauer partners Allan Bloom, Elise Bloom, and Harris Mufson delivered a webinar focused on how recent developments in the law impact the ground rules and key strategies for settlement in four distinct areas...more
Courts are still going both ways on applying Bristol-Myers Squibb to class actions. Two recent decisions highlight this split. The first—and we’ll always start with the good news—comes out of the District of Massachusetts...more
The U.S. Supreme Court closed out its most recent term, which began in October 2017, with a number of high-profile and ground-breaking decisions. ...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Second Circuit will soon decide key issues for FLSA practitioners: whether settlements pursuant to an Offer of Judgment are subject to court review and approval, and whether the standards for final...more
It has become almost part of the plaintiff playbook to bring wage and hour claims despite lawful employer policies by claiming some sort of “class-wide” policy of deviating from those policies. Sadly, this tactic works at...more
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
Those who follow developments in wage and hour class actions know that challenges to the exempt status of assistant managers are quite common. Such cases often hinge on a detailed analysis of the actual job duties...more