Law 2014: Within Employment Discrimination, It’s a Wage-and-Hour World
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The 2011 U.S. Supreme Court case known as Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes has in many ways made it harder for plaintiffs to bring successful workplace-discrimination class-action suits.
But that hasn’t meant that the plaintiffs’ bar has stopped filing employment-related suits altogether.
To the contrary — plaintiffs have merely switched tactics, according to employment lawyers. For starters, they’re filing more wage-and-hour litigation, accusing employers of shortchanging employees by misclassifying them, stiffing them on overtime pay, or otherwise failing to pay what they owe.
In 2013, about 10% more wage-and-hour suits were filed than in 2012, according to Gerald Maatman, a labor & employment lawyer at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago, and the editor of the annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report. Mr. Maatman predicted no slowdown in wage-and-hour suits heading into 2014.
“For advocates of workers, wage-and-hour is really where the action is right now,” said Mr. Maatman, who called such suits “low-hanging fruit” for plaintiffs’ lawyers, partly because of worker-friendly laws in six populous states: California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Read original articleTags: class-action suits, employment lawyer, employment lawyers, Plaintiffs
