Seyfarth Shaw has updated its definitive guide to the litigation of wage and hour lawsuits. Co-authored by three Seyfarth partners and edited by the chair of the firm’s national wage-hour practice, Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation is an essential resource for practitioners. The unique treatise provides insight into litigation strategy through all phases of wage & hour lawsuits, and is now updated with additional significant cases through early 2015. Among many other topics, the treatise’s authors examine how employers in multiple industries are targeted for wage-hour lawsuits and provide substantive, procedural and practical considerations that determine the outcome of such actions in today’s courts. Principally designed to assist employment litigators and in-house counsel, the treatise also proves useful to senior management seeking to fend off wage-hour actions before they strike.
Authors Noah Finkel, Brett Bartlett and Andrew Paley, who practice in the firm’s Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles offices respectively, as well as Boston-based Richard Alfred, who is Chair of Seyfarth’s National Wage & Hour Litigation Practice Group, are each experienced wage and hour litigators who have handled numerous collective and class actions asserting violations under both state and federal law.
Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation covers the complex rules surrounding all types of wage and hour lawsuits. These include claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act, claims under state wage and hour laws, or hybrid cases involving both, as well as special issues involving government contractors. It provides readers guidance around: how to respond to a wage and hour complaint; what to consider when deciding whether to remove a case to federal court; how to assess the particular merits of a claim; whether to settle; how to oppose plaintiffs’ motion to facilitate notice for conditional certification; what kinds of affirmative defenses are best; and how to tilt the odds in favor of the defense.
In its fifth update to the treatise, Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation features discussions of recent decisions from appellate and trial courts and their effect on wage and hour litigation, emphasizing the following developments:
- The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk in which the Court held that time spent by employees going through anti-theft metal detectors at the end of their shifts was not compensable because it was not integral or indispensable to the employees’ principal activities.
- The United States Supreme Court’s decision to hear Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, a case that will provide the Supreme Court with the opportunity to clarify the extent to which Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes applies to FLSA collective actions.
- Federal District Court decisions refusing to follow the California Supreme Court’s decision in Iskanian and ruling that the FAA preempts California’s rule against the waiver of PAGA claims.
- The Ninth Circuit joining the First, Second and Third Circuits in requiring allegations that a plaintiff worked more than 40 hours in a given work week without being compensated for those additional hours to avoid a motion to dismiss, and the Eighth Circuit requiring proof of such conduct to avoid summary judgment.
- A number of Federal District Court cases specifying how notice of conditional certification must be provided and what must be contained in the notice, including notifying potential class members that they could be liable for costs.
The 2015 update to Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation is published by American Lawyer Media’s Law Journal Press. It is available online at www.lawcatalog.com.
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