18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

298 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition Weist, et al. v. City Of Davis , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28678 (E.D. Cal. Feb. 16, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of current and former hourly employees, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant failed to properly calculate overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiffs asserted that Defendant failed to include cash-in-lieu of health benefits for payroll purposes, and such payments should have been included in the regular rate of pay used for calculating and paying overtime compensation. The parties ultimately settled the matter, and Plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary settlement approval. The Court granted the motion. Under the terms of the agreement, Defendant agreed to pay an amount not to exceed $1,268,912.04 to settle the claims of 253 opt-in Plaintiffs, including $943,912.04 for wages and liquidated damages and $325,000 for attorneys’ fees. The Court found that the settlement was fair and reasonable. The Court noted that the settlement was reached after three years of litigation, including extensive discovery, investigation, and analysis by Plaintiffs’ counsel and Plaintiffs’ experts. The Court further determined that the settlement resolved a bona fide dispute with uncertainly on both sides if the issues were to go to trial. The Court found that the scope of the release was reasonable, as it was limited to releasing only the claims asserted in the complaint. The Court also found no evidence of fraud or collusion on the part of the parties or their counsel in negotiating the settlement. The Court further held that the requested attorneys’ fees were reasonable under both the percentage of the common fund and the lodestar analyses. Finally, the Court determined that the notice procedures, payment procedures, and cy pres designee proposed were also fair and reasonable. For these reasons, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary settlement approval. (xxxii) Settlement Bar And Estoppel Issues In Wage & Hour Class Actions Magana, et al. v. Zara USA, Inc., 856 Fed. App’x 83 (9th Cir. 2021). Plaintiff, a retail employee, filed a representative action seeking penalties under the California Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”) based on a suitable seating violation of the California Labor Code. The District Court dismissed Plaintiff’s claim on the basis that it was barred by claim preclusion because Plaintiff was an unnamed class member in an earlier wage & hour settlement with Zara. Id . at 84. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court’s ruling. The Ninth Circuit found that the settlement agreement did not expressly exclude the seating claim. Defendant argued that the definition of "PAGA Settlement Amount" in the agreement constituted "full satisfaction of all claims for PAGA civil penalties under the California Labor Code, Wage Orders, regulations, and/or other provisions of law alleged to have been violated with respect to the Settlement Class." Id . The Ninth Circuit reasoned that the settlement agreement’s broad definitional language must be read in the context of the more specific limiting language in the settlement agreement’s release provision itself. Id . The settlement agreement also contained a "Release of Claims by Participating Class Members," which made clear that the settlement release applied only to "claims for relief based on the facts alleged in [the complaint]." Id . at 85. The Ninth Circuit read the settlement agreement to plainly limit the release of PAGA claims to only those claims based on the facts alleged in the complaint, which consisted of unpaid overtime, unpaid minimum wages, non-compliant wage statements, meal and rest breaks violations, and the untimely payment of wages in violation of the California Labor Code. Id . The Ninth Circuit thus found that since the complaint did not allege any facts related to suitable seating, the agreement’s release provision did not encompass the suitable seating claim. The Ninth Circuit looked to whether the alleged claims in the settled matter implicated the same primary right as Plaintiff’s allegations in the lawsuit. The Ninth Circuit concluded that it was not, as the suitable seating claim was entirely unrelated to wages. The Ninth Circuit opined that the harm of a suitable seating violation was much more abstract than wage non-payment, and therefore Plaintiff’s claim did not implicate the same primary right as any of the wage-related claims resolved in the earlier class-wide settlement, and was thus not precluded by the settlement. Accordingly, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court’s ruling. Rogers, et al. v. Werner Enterprises , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104653 (D. Neb. June 3, 2021). Plaintiff, a former over-the-road truck driver trainee, filed a class and collective action alleging that Defendant failed to pay for all compensable time during multi-day trips in violation of the FLSA and state labor laws. During Defendants’ training program, trainees were responsible for the rigs during a 24-hour period of a multi-day trip. Plaintiff contended that the only non-compensable time in each 24-hour workday was the eight hour rest period provided, and that Defendants were required, but failed, to pay trainees the requisite minimum wage for the remaining 16 hours of each workday. Id . at *2. Plaintiff also asserted that because trainees were required to reside in their rigs and could not "engage in private and personal pursuits of their own" during the eight hour rest time, Defendants should pay minimum wages for full 24-hour days. Id . at *4. Defendants filed a motion to