California Supreme Court Grants Review In Iskanian v. CLS Transportation;...
For years, the California Supreme Court was one of the strongest forces against arbitration in the country. A disproportionate number of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions addressing preemption under...
View ArticleCalifornia Court of Appeal Upholds Time Entry Rounding in Wage and Hour Class...
Many employers, especially in California, are targeted by wage and hour class actions. A recent decision by the California Court of Appeal may provide employers with some much-needed relief (and...
View ArticleCalifornia Court Of Appeal Strikes Down Arbitration Agreement In...
A California appellate court weighed in last week with another effort to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion. In Franco v. Arakelian Enterprises, Inc....
View ArticleBrinker’s Impact on Certification of Meal-Break Class Actions in California
Class actions alleging that employers’ meal-break policies violate California law have long been a favorite of the plaintiffs’ bar. Earlier this year, however, the California Supreme Court handed...
View ArticleHow Much Discovery From Opt-Ins in FLSA Collective Actions Should Businesses...
A recent federal court decision has addressed the knotty issue of a defendant’s right to discovery in an FLSA collective action from the individuals who opt into the class after it is conditionally...
View ArticleSeventh Circuit: A “Shapeless, Free-Wheeling” Trial Plan Is Grounds for...
The Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC—authored by Judge Posner—is full of good news for employers and other class-action defendants. The case is a hybrid collective...
View ArticleCalifornia Supreme Court Grants Review In Employment Arbitration Case
The California Supreme Court granted review last week in Franco v. Arakelian Enterprises Inc., No. S207660, in which the California Court of Appeal had refused to enforce an agreement to arbitrate on...
View ArticleSecond Circuit Reverses Denial Of Individual Arbitration In Title VII Class...
Since Concepcion, the plaintiffs’ bar has been exhorting courts to recognize exceptions to its holding that courts may not refuse to enforce an arbitration agreement on the ground that it precludes...
View ArticleSupreme Court Holds that Plaintiff Whose Individual Claims Were Mooted by an...
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (“FLSA”) permits an employee to file a “collective action” for damages against an employer individually and on behalf of other “similarly situated” employees who...
View ArticleU.S. Seeks Supreme Court Review of Noel Canning v. NLRB in an Effort to...
We’ve previously written about the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Noel Canning v. NLRB, which held that President Obama’s three recess appointments in 2012 to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are...
View ArticleIn-House Counsel Predictions of Class Action Trends
Carlton Fields recently published a survey (pdf) of 368 general counsel and other in-house counsel at major companies across more than 25 industries regarding the class actions they faced in 2012 and...
View ArticleCourt Allows Employer Discovery Into Whether EEOC Actually Investigated...
A quick tip to employers facing class actions brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—don’t forget about the EEOC’s statutory duty to investigate the claim before filing suit....
View ArticleHow to Draft Fair and Enforceable Consumer and Employee Arbitration Agreements
We frequently help companies address how to manage dispute resolution with their customers and employees—and in particular, how to make use of arbitration as a fair alternative to litigation in court...
View ArticleThe Fate of Hollywood Internship Programs May Rest With the Second Circuit
Former interns used to get revenge against their employers by writing tell-all blog posts and memoirs. Now, they’re lending their names to plaintiffs’ lawyers, who then file wage-and-hour class or...
View ArticleRecent Appellate Decisions Underscore That Wage and Hour Class Actions are...
Some observers of California wage-and-hour class actions contended that the Brinker v. Superior Court—a key decision we have discussed in the past—had sounded the death knell for class certification in...
View ArticleDo Employers Have To Pay Unionized Workers For Time Spent Donning and Doffing...
In recent years, one of the hottest types of collective actions against employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) is what is commonly called a “donning and doffing claim”—a lawsuit for...
View ArticleSupreme Court to Decide Whether Fair Labor Standards Act Requires...
The Supreme Court makes its biggest headlines when it wades into the biggest issues of the day. But the Supreme Court also maintains a substantial docket of seemingly small—but ultimately...
View ArticleCalifornia Supreme Court Rejects Exceptionally Poor Sampling Method, But...
In Duran v. U.S. Bank N.A. (pdf), the California Supreme Court recently addressed an important question in the context of state-court class actions: Can plaintiffs invoke statistical sampling in an...
View ArticleCalifornia Court Says No Need To Resolve Disputes Over Substantive Law In...
Suppose that you’re a trial court considering a motion for class certification. And suppose that the parties present you with two competing statutory interpretations. One legal standard permits the...
View ArticleYes, you really did settle all your claims when you said you did: Ninth...
A plaintiff hopes to represent a class to pursue two sets of wage-and-hour claims but runs into headwinds in the district court. First, one set of claims disappears because his legal theory doesn’t...
View Article
