Not quite two years ago, the Supreme Court decided the case of Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, 138 S. Ct. 1134 (2018), a case we blogged here. The case itself involved the issue of whether service consultants at auto dealers were exempt from overtime under the FLSA. While the Supreme Court held that they were, the case had far broader implications because the Supreme Court rejected the view that the FLSA’s exemptions were to…

While class actions may prove lucrative for the plaintiffs who bring them, most cases just aren’t suitable for class action treatment and many would likely fare far better if the plaintiffs simply limited themselves to a single employee or location. Case in point. In Guzman v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Case No. 17-cv-02606-HSG (N.D. Cal. Jan. 15, 2020), the plaintiffs sought to assert that all of the hundreds of California Chipotle restaurants operated under an…

Ten years ago, the Ninth Circuit upheld the certification of a sprawling nationwide class action in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., only to see that decision overturned a year later by the Supreme Court. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011). In the intervening decade, the Supreme Court similarly up-ended the Ninth Circuit authority that tried to limit the use of arbitration agreements design to rein in class action litigation. See, e.g.,…

A recent case from the Third Circuit casts a spotlight on many of the problems inherent in so-called off-the-clock claims for overtime. In Ferreras v. American Airlines, Case No. 18-3143 (3d Cir. Dec. 24, 2019), the plaintiffs claimed that various employer time-keeping policies resulted in employees not being paid for all hours worked. One was an automatic deduction of 30 minutes for meal breaks. Another was a “”grace period” for employees to clock in…

A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order halting the enforcement of Assembly Bill 51, California’s latest attempt to prevent arbitration of claims brought under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. We initially wrote about this statute, which sought to criminalize the use of arbitration agreements, on Oct. 11, 2019. AB 51, slated to take effect on Jan. 1, 2020, had three main aspects. It provided that: An employer cannot require that…

Many litigants in FLSA cases find practical obstacles in settling the matters, particularly when there are disputes regarding what exactly has happened or when the underlying claim turns out to be very small. This process is made more difficult by the judicial interpretation of the FLSA’s enforcement provision, section 16, which permits the Department of Labor to supervise settlements. Courts have reached different conclusions regarding the interpretation of this power and whether it means that…

How Many Decades of Litigation is Enough? On retreating from Russia after the disastrous 1812 invasion, Napoleon famously commented, “It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.” That adage applies equally well to the latest opinion in the now 14-year old dispute between the EEOC and trucking company CRST. We’ve blogged various chapters of this saga in the past (3/21/2012, 4/20/2011, 10/7/2013 and 5/19/2016). In a nutshell, based on…