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 of New York. It seems like a laundry list of many types of claims that have been certified, and they no doubt expected … Continue Reading
Nothing succeeds like success. Four years ago, in Morgan v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., 551 F.3d 1233 (11th Cir. 2008), the Eleventh Circuit upheld a $35+ million jury award against the Family Dollar store discount chain for allegedly misclassifying its store managers as exempt. Predictably, retailers, already a target (no pun intended) of such litigation, … Continue Reading
In a decision that emphasizes practicality over formalism, the Ninth Circuit recently held that pharmaceutical sales representatives (“PSRs”) are exempt from overtime pay. In Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp.pdf, __F.3d___, 2011 WL 489708 (9thCir. Feb. 14, 2011) the Court concluded that the “outside sales” exemption to the FLSA applies to PSRs, meaning that they are … Continue Reading
We’ve written at least three times now on the case of Dukes v. Wal-Mart, now pending before the United States Supreme Court, as it is the largest employment class action in history. Perhaps a relatively distant second is the collection of cases against FedEx Ground Package System, currently being handled through the multidistrict litigation docket in Northern Indiana. … Continue Reading
Cases involving employment and antitrust are rare. Typically, such cases involve claims that a group of employers agreed expressly or impliedly to cap or limit wages among their employees. For example, they may claim that the employers in a particular industry agreed not to pay more than a set wage for employees in certain positions. … Continue Reading
On October 27, 2010, the Second Circuit affirmed a federal court’s refusal to certify a proposed class of Hertz Station Managers allegedly denied overtime under New York law. (Myers v. Hertz Corp., No. 08-1037 (2d Cir. Oct. 27, 2010)). In doing so, the court addressed the potential difficulties of certifying Rule 23 overtime exemption cases … Continue Reading
As we wrote on August 31, many plaintiffs and defendants assume, if often implicitly, that conditional certification of an FLSA class is tantamount to a win for the plaintiffs. This is so even though conditionally certified classes are frequently decertified later in the case. In fact, conditional certification, despite having the name “certification” in its … Continue Reading