18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

VII. Significant State Law Class Action Rulings Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 365 Over the last decade, plaintiffs’ lawyers have resorted to state court forums on an ever increasing basis to pursue employment-related class action litigation. The civil justice system in each state is obviously different, and the resulting impact on businesses often varies from county to county within certain jurisdictions. Some states and certain counties within those states are viewed by litigants as safe havens for opportunistic class action lawsuits, which position those jurisdictions as launching platforms for dubious claims or novel theories of recovery. Through a variety of factors – including forum shopping, discovery abuse, consolidation and joinder practices, lax evidentiary standards for experts, the absence of limitations on damages, and plaintiff-friendly class certification precedents – those jurisdictions tend to spawn more class action litigation. As reflected by the volume of rulings on class action issues, those jurisdictions in 2021 were clustered in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Rulings from California alone resulted in 70 class action decisions of the 151 decisions analyzed in this Chapter. In terms of class action rulings at the state level, the following map shows those rulings: Wage & hour claims, in particular, have been filed in state courts at a precipitous rate. The most dominant trend has been a steep rise in the number of class action lawsuits filed in state courts alleging violations of California’s overtime laws or the California Labor Code and wage & hour regulations. This trend continued unabated in 2021. The rate of new case filings has continued to grow to the point where multiple class actions are filed in California every day. The reasons for this trend are varied. First, California’s wage & hour laws differ from federal law in subtle yet important ways. This means that an employer might be compliant with federal law, but not California law. Second, California’s procedural rules make it easier to file a class action or collective action. In contrast, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires an “opt-in” procedure that is generally less lucrative to plaintiffs than a traditional “opt-out” class action. Third, California’s unfair competition law allows claimants to borrow violations of other laws but extend the statute of limitations to four years, which tends to make class actions more lucrative. Fourth, many California Labor Code provisions allow for the recovery of attorneys’ fees, creating additional incentives for plaintiffs’ counsel to pursue class actions.