18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

172 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition not issued any wage statements thereafter, the Court concluded that any claims for penalties for wage statement violations were time-barred. Since Plaintiff was not a current employee, she was no longer being continuously harmed by Defendant’s alleged wage statement violations, and therefore the Court found that she lacked standing to pursue a claim for injunctive relief under the UCL. Finally, the Court held that Plaintiff was not subject to an arbitration agreement, and therefore she lacked standing to assert defenses on behalf of putative class members who were bound by arbitration agreements. Accordingly, the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion for class certification. Cabanillas, et al. v. 4716 Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160934 (D. Ariz. Aug. 25, 2021). Plaintiff, an exotic dancer at an adult night club, filed a collective action alleging Defendants had misclassified dancers as independent contractors and thereby failed to pay minimum wages and overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court denied. The Court found that Defendant offered sufficient evidence to support its contention that all dancers were subject to binding arbitration agreements. The Court reasoned that pertinent case law authorities established that conditional certification was inappropriate in collective actions where Plaintiffs and proposed collective action members had agreed to arbitration, since they were incapable of advancing such claims in a judicial forum where the claims “were wholly subject to arbitration." Id. at *16. The Court ruled that there was no evidence that any putative opt-in Plaintiff would not be subject to a valid arbitration agreement with a class or collective action waiver. Id. at *17. For these reasons, the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification of a collective action. Canava, et al. v. Rail Delivery Services, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 206359 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 8, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of truck drivers, filed a class and collective action alleging that Defendants misclassified truck drivers as independent contractors and thereby failed to pay them overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA and the California Labor Code. The Court previously had granted conditional certification of a collective action. Following discovery, Defendant subsequently moved to decertify the collective action, and the Court denied the motion. Defendants argued that Plaintiffs were not similarly-situated for purposes of determining their employment status under federal law. Id . at *7. Defendants contended that application of the economic realities test to each individual driver would be too variable to allow resolution of their employment status collectively because drivers made diverse choices about how much control they would exercise over their work, which resulted in different schedules and work hours. The Court reasoned that the differences among Plaintiffs appeared to be a function of individual choices made according to similar agreements with Defendants, not some meaningful variance in Defendants’ exercise of authority over specific drivers. Id . at *10. Further, the Court opined that all drivers had had the same "opportunity for profit or loss" because they all operated under the same system in which Defendants "retained the right to determine the loads." Id . at *11. The Court determined that dividing the collective action into two sub-groups based on the drivers’ contract to allow the drivers’ employment status under each to be resolved separately would be appropriate. Id . at *13. For these reasons, the Court denied Defendants’ motion for decertification. Carlson, et al. v. United National Foods, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 154079 (W.D. Wash. Aug. 14, 2021). Plaintiff, employed at different times as a Warehouse Coordinator, Customer Care Coordinator, Operations Coordinator, and Account Coordinator, filed a collective action alleging Defendants had misclassified him as an exempt employee and thereby failed to pay overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court granted. Plaintiff asserted that beginning in February 2020, Defendant reclassified a number of employees as non-exempt and began to pay them overtime compensation. Plaintiff alleged that prior to that time, Defendants had a policy of "suffering and permitting" those employees to work off-the-clock. Id . at *6. Defendants contended that Plaintiff failed to establish that he was similarly-situated to each reclassified employee. The Court found that Defendants’ argument addressed the merits of the lawsuit of whether some opt-in Plaintiffs might be unable to establish post- February 2020 claims. The Court further determined that the records contained sufficient evidence to demonstrate similarity of the workers and their jobs as to post-February 2020 off-the-clock claims. Plaintiff submitted a letter from February 2020 from Defendants advising him of his reclassification. The Court reasoned that the letter suggested that multiple employees with his same job title were reclassified as non-exempt. Id . at *6-7. The Court thus held that Plaintiff had made the requisite showing to demonstrate that he was similarly-