Class Action

Subscribe to Class Action

An Alabama federal judge granted AutoZone’s request to dismiss nearly 500 current and former store managers from a nationwide collective action that the national auto-parts chain had misclassified them as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act
and denied them overtime, holding those plaintiffs had missed the three-year statute of limitations and that plaintiffs had failed to establish equitable tolling should apply to save their claims.
Continue Reading The Doctrine of Equitable Tolling Won’t Save Hundreds of Store Managers from Dismissal in AutoZone’s Nationwide Overtime Suit

This month, the Southern District of Florida declined to certify a nationwide class of Denny’s servers alleging the restaurant chain had violated the minimum wage and tip credit provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act on the basis that the named plaintiff failed to provide enough evidence that the servers were similarly situated.
Continue Reading Proposed Nationwide Class of Denny’s Restaurant Servers Denied Certification in FLSA Action

A federal district court in Florida recently declined to conditionally certify a nationwide collective action brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act because the plaintiff did not show sufficient evidence that she was similarly situated to other restaurant managers who wanted to join.
Continue Reading Federal Court Denies Conditional Certification of Collective Action Involving Restaurant Managers

A hotly contested ruling in a Fair Credit Reporting Act class action case will soon be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.  The Ninth Circuit in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, Case No. 17-17244, recently granted the parties’ Joint Motion to Stay the Mandate, seeking to stay the Ninth Circuit’s mandate pending TransUnion’s filing of a petition for writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court.  The Motion to Stay comes soon after the court denied TransUnion’s Petition for Rehearing or Rehearing En Banc regarding the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, 951 F.3d 1008 (9th Cir. 2020).
Continue Reading TransUnion to Seek Supreme Court Review After Ninth Circuit Finds Class Members Had Standing and Partially Upholds Punitive Damages Award

A recent Fifth Circuit opinion held that a company’s arbitration agreement did not prevent employees from pursuing their claims as a collective arbitration, rather than individual claims.  As class claims related to COVID-19 begin to surge, the opinion provides occasion for companies to review their arbitration agreements to ensure that the companies’ aims are clearly drafted.
Continue Reading As COVID-based Class Actions Loom, Fifth Circuit Provides Reminder for Arbitration Agreements and Class Action Waivers

The Ninth Circuit recently overturned a district court’s grant of class certification on a wage statement claim under California Labor Code §226 because there were no “real-world consequences” stemming from the alleged misidentification of the employer’s name on the wage statement.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Strikes Down California Wage Statement Class Action for Plaintiff’s Failure to Show “Real World Consequences” to Establish Standing

For the first time in the Ninth Circuit, the Court of Appeals addressed the issue of whether every class member in a class action lawsuit needs “standing” to recover damages at the final judgment stage, and found in the affirmative.  In Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, No. 17-17244, 2020 WL 946973 (9th Cir. Feb. 27, 2020), a class of 8,185 consumers brought a class action against the credit reporting agency TransUnion LLC pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, alleging that TransUnion, knowing that its practice was unlawful, incorrectly placed terrorist alerts on the front page of consumers’ credit reports and later sent the consumers misleading and incomplete disclosures about the alerts and how to remove them. …
Continue Reading For the First Time in the Ninth Circuit, the Court Finds That All Class Members in a Class Action Must Have Standing to Recover Damages

A recent California appellate court decision has held that a banquet hall’s “mandatory service charge” could, under the right circumstances, be a “gratuity” that must be paid to employees under California Labor Code § 351.
Continue Reading California Appellate Court Rules that a Service Charge Could Be a Gratuity under the Labor Code

Dollar General and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently settled a six-year-old Title VII lawsuit.  The EEOC brought its race discrimination claim on behalf of a Charging Party and a class of Black job applicants, alleging that Dollar General’s use of criminal justice history information in the hiring process had a disparate impact on Black applicants.
Continue Reading The EEOC Settles Six-Year-Old Lawsuit Attacking Background Check Policy

In Cordúa Restaurants, Inc., 368 NLRB No. 43 (2019), the National Labor Relations Board issued its first major decision following the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Epic Systems, addressing a number of issues of first impression and providing guidance on the permissible scope and implementation of class action waivers.  …
Continue Reading The NLRB Issues Major Class Action Waiver/Mandatory Arbitration Ruling