Articles Discussing Wage & Hour Class Actions

A group of workers at several Wendy’s franchise restaurants across central and southern Pennsylvania have sued their employers for manipulating weekly timesheets and underpaying workers against state and federal law. Franchise owners Harrisburg LIV Bacon LLC and Yellow Cab Holdings Pennsylvania LLC were named in the lawsuit for violating

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, thousands of pandemic-related lawsuits, including hundreds of putative class or collective actions, have been filed — and the number continues to grow. A large percentage of those lawsuits involve wage and hour claims, centered around issues including, but not limited to, failure to pay for

On June 6, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear petitions seeking review of whether federal courts may exercise personal jurisdiction over claims of nonresident plaintiffs who join Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective actions when their claims are not connected to the defendant’s activities in

In December 2021, a cyberattack struck the beverage giant PepsiCo, locking workers out of their timekeeping system. The hack left workers without a reliable way to clock in and out of their shifts and disrupted the company’s ability to track employees’ wages and hours. Rather than creating a new system

Comcast and its recruiting agency Robert Half International are currently facing a wage and hour class action lawsuit filed by former employee Trevor Scott. In the lawsuit filed last month in Pennsylvania federal court, Scott alleges that he and other incident managers worked over 40 hours a week without

In its 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state court could not exercise specific personal jurisdiction over nonresident plaintiffs’ claims against a nonresident company.

Recently, and for the first time in more than 20 years, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled on the transportation worker exemption contained in Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). In Waithaka v. Amazon.com, Inc., 966 F.3d 10 (1st Cir. 2020), the court

In many suits filed as collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), individuals hoping to join the action as opt-in plaintiffs submit consents to join the lawsuit even before the named plaintiff moves for conditional certification of the collective. Companies and courts are often unsure how to treat these “putative opt-in” participants before the court certifies any collective action: Are they subject to discovery? If the matter is settled, must they be included? If summary judgment is granted on the named plaintiff’s claims, what happens to the claims of the putative opt-ins? Are they dismissed? With or without prejudice?

It is a party that most employers don’t believe is a lot of fun: a FLSA collective action party. In a case of first impression, the Eleventh Circuit addressed the question of whether an opt-in plaintiff is required to do anything beyond filing a written consent to become a party plaintiff in a collective action under the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. §216(b).

In a case for minimum wage and overtime claims, the Eleventh Circuit joined the D.C., Second, Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits in holding that a state-law Rule 23 class action may be maintained in the same proceeding as a Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) collective action. Calderone, et. al. v. Scott, No. 2:14-cv-00519-JES-CM (11th Cir. Sept. 28, 2016).

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling in Morris v. Ernst & Young, dealing a surprising blow to the enforceability of class and collective action waivers in employment arbitration agreements. More specifically, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the view of the National Labor Relations Board (beginning with the NLRB’s D.R. Horton decision) that it is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) for an employer to condition employment on an employee signing an arbitration agreement that waives the employee’s ability to pursue claims on a class or collective basis and instead requires that all claims be resolved on an individual basis in arbitration.

On April 21, 2016, Uber tried to buy its peace from two class actions in a $100 million settlement with 385,000 putative class members. See O’Connor v. Uber Technologies Inc., 3:13-cv-03826 (N.D. Cal.); Yucesoy v. Uber Technologies Inc., 3:15-cv-00262 (N.D. Cal.). However, as of July 14, 2016, the class actions still remain open pending court approval of the settlement.

recent New York State Supreme Court decision raises the bar for certifying an “opt out” class of unpaid interns seeking minimum or other wages, and provides valuable guidance for employers facing challenges to their unpaid internship programs. Rodriguez v. 5W Public Relations, Index No. 156571/14 (July 26, 2016). In Rodriguez, Justice Cynthia Kern denied class certification to named plaintiff Kristina Rodriguez and a putative class of individuals who interned with a New York City public relations firm. Rodriguez alleged that, since 2008, she and others were misclassified as unpaid interns when they were actually employees entitled to minimum wage pursuant to the New York Labor Law (“NYLL”) §§ 663 and 198.

In a case that could be of significant benefit to employers in California and elsewhere around the country, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a ruling that plaintiffs failed to satisfy the “commonality” requirement essential to a collective action on their wage-hour claim where they had the authority to edit the time entries that served as the basis for their claim. Coleman v. Jenny Craig, Inc., 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 7164 (April 6, 2016).