Our lawyers have extensive experience representing employers in employment class action litigation, including:

  • Class actions challenging hiring, promotion, compensation and other employer policies and practices on the basis of race, sex, age, national origin and other legally-protected characteristics.
  • Government initiated class actions by the OFCCP against federal contractors and subcontractors and by the state and federal labor departments. 
  • State and federal wage and hour collective and class actions challenging exempt job classifications, meal and rest breaks, travel, on-call and waiting time and other pay practices. 
  • ERISA and related employee benefits class actions.

Over the past several years, our lawyers have handled numerous class actions and multi-plaintiff claims.

We have a proven track record of success in class action cases. Capitalizing on our experience and knowledge of these claims, we have achieved success for our clients in a variety of ways from the use of statistical evidence to demonstrate that the employer’s policies and practices are non-discriminatory, to defeating class certification attempts, to winning at summary judgment and at trial.

One of our partners, while at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, helped develop the statistical protocols widely used in employment class actions today. Another one of our partners was involved with the series of seminal cases which laid the ground work for notice and opt-in procedures under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Another partner based in California is one of the leading wage and hour class action specialists.

We have a trained staff and state of the art systems that allow us to organize large volumes of documents and information, digest depositions and provide easy access to briefs, research and other legal resources. We have relationships with leading economists, statisticians organizational psychologists (testing), and sociologists, all of whom are necessary at times to prevail in class cases.

Some of our recent success stories are:

  • In a multi-state racial discrimination class action involving more than 20,000 individuals against a major retail chain, a leading plaintiffs’ class action firm agreed to a nominal settlement of all claims after we opposed plaintiffs’ motion for class certification and demonstrated the lack of statistical evidence to support the class claims.
  • We defended a leading consumer products manufacturer against a racial discrimination class action involving hundreds of current and former employees. The settlement included nominal monetary and equitable relief. Pre-litigation auditing and corrective action prevented assertion of any economically viable race claims.
  • We defended a major pharmaceutical firm in one of the nation’s largest federal age discrimination collective actions. After extensive appellate and Supreme Court litigation, the trial court granted our client summary judgment on plaintiffs’ class-based pattern and practice claims. Nominal individual settlements followed.
  • We represented a Fortune 500 manufacturer in a threatened, nationwide class action that was dropped by a leading plaintiffs’ class action firm after we demonstrated that the case had no statistical merit.
  • We defended a national wholesaler in a wage and hour class action challenging the exempt status of its marketing and other salaried personnel. We successfully narrowed the potential class to a small group of employees, substantially reduced the alleged damages, and settled the lawsuit on favorable terms.
  • We obtained complete dismissal of a national FLSA collective action involving “on call” pay and overtime issues for the client’s drivers.
  • We defeated conditional certification of a national class in a FLSA collective action and limited conditional certification to just one district in a case involving travel pay and overtime issues; thereafter, we prevailed on our motion to decertify the conditional class.
  • We convinced a plaintiff to dismiss class allegations in a waiting time class action case due to a lack of “commonality.”

We are currently representing employers in a variety EEO, ERISA and wage and hour class actions from California to Florida. We pride ourselves on our strategic approach, deep understanding of statistical and pattern and practice evidence, client and business orientation, and trial experience.