Even before the current pandemic crisis, we have noticed a growing trend in the filing of class action lawsuits challenging, under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), notices required to be issued by covered employers regarding continuation health care coverage available to employees and their beneficiaries under a variety of circumstances, including involuntary or voluntary job loss. We believe that trend will only accelerate in the wake of ... Keep Reading »
Archives for March 2020
Another Premature Motion to Strike Class Allegations Bites the Dust
Courts have been and likely always will be reluctant to strike class allegations or deny class certification before class discovery. Indeed, over-aggressive attempts to strike class allegations can often do more harm than good when the court, in denying a motion to strike, gives the plaintiff a roadmap of how to proceed at the class certification stage. Custom photography company Shutterfly was recently reminded of that tendency when a California district court denied ... Keep Reading »
Reporting for Work
Does reporting for work require physically showing up at the place ready to work? The Ninth Circuit just confronted this issue. It decided that California’s Wage Order No. 7-2001 does not require an employee to report to work in person in order to qualify for reporting time pay. No physical presence is required. Although this case does not directly implicate the variety of remote and virtual work arrangements that have been instituted in light of the current public ... Keep Reading »
The Conservative Case for Class Actions: A Provocative Proposal
Vanderbilt University law professor Brian Fitzpatrick has written a new book titled The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). An excerpt was published in the winter 2020 issue of Vanderbilt Law. I haven’t read the book yet, but since I am a class action lawyer, a conservative, and a Vandy grad, I found the excerpt intriguing and worthy of mention. Fitzpatrick proposes that class action lawsuits are good for conservative principles, ... Keep Reading »
Take Notice: FTC Reports on Claims Rates and Settlement Notices
In September 2019, the Federal Trade Commission issued a staff report titled "Consumers and Class Actions: A Retrospective and Analysis of Settlement Campaigns." The FTC staff studied 149 consumer class action settlements and conducted an internet-based consumer research study to explore consumer understanding of class action notices. Among the salient findings were: The overall claims rate of the cases in the sample was less than 10%. Specifically, the median ... Keep Reading »