Articles Discussing Wage & Hour Class Actions

The Sixth Circuit has become the second federal appeals court to toughen the standard for plaintiffs seeking court-authorized notice to potential claimants in a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). On May 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held in Brooke

On May 19, 2023, in Clark v. A&L Home Care and Training Center, LLC., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the familiar two-step certification procedure in collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), instead requiring lead plaintiffs to demonstrate a “strong likelihood” that other

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 (FLSA) established in a 2021 landmark opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Mathews v. USA Today Sports Media Group, LLC, No. 1:22-cv-1407 (E.D. Va. Apr. 14, 2023).

On April 14, 2023, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Ellis, J.) declined to conditionally certify a collective of USA Today sports website editors, ruling that the familiar two-step Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective certification process would lead to irrelevant parties learning of and

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to settle the circuit split on whether its 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal. applies to collective actions brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In Bristol-Myers, a mass tort action, the justices held that a federal court could not exercise specific

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).