18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

420 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition Court held that the trial court properly ruled that the voluntary payment doctrine did not bar Plaintiffs from challenging the constitutionality of the foreclosure statutes at issue because the duress exception applied to the foreclosure filing fee as it implicated reasonable access to the judicial process without payment. Under the rationale basis test, the Supreme Court ruled that 735 ILCS 5/15-1504.1 and 20 ILCS 3805/7.30, 7.31 were facially unconstitutional as violative of the free access clause. The Supreme Court found that the statutes at issue violated the Illinois Constitution because the $50 filing fee charged under § 15-1504.1 was not a fee, but rather was a litigation tax that had no direct relation to the expenses of litigation or the services rendered. The Supreme Court determined that there was no rational basis for imposing the fee on foreclosure litigants, which required them to bear the cost of maintaining a social welfare program, while excluding other classes of taxpayers from the burden. For these reasons, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgments of the trial court. Watson, et al. v. Legacy Healthcare Financial Services Inc. , 2021 Ill. App. LEXIS 679 (Ill. App. 1st Dist. Dec. 15, 2021). Plaintiff, a certified nursing assistant, filed a class action alleging that Defendants required employees to scan their biometric handprint in order to clock-in and clock-out of work, and thereby violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) by failing to: (i) publicly provide a written policy governing the retention and permanent destruction of biometric information, (ii) inform any subject in writing that his or her biometric information was being collected or stored; (iii) inform the subject in writing of the specific purpose and length of time for which his or her biometric information was being stored and used; and (iv) obtain his or her written consent. Id . at *4. The trial court granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss on the grounds that Plaintiff’s claim accrued on the first day they collected Plaintiff’s biometric information and that Plaintiff’s suit was thereby time-barred. On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed and remanded the trial court’s ruling. Plaintiff argued that his suit was not time-barred because the statute of limitations was five years and it accrued with each capture of his biometric information that Defendants obtained without providing notice or obtaining consent. Id . at *5. The Appellate Court determined that the BIPA itself does not contain an express statute of limitation or set forth an accrual date. However, the Appellate Court found that under the plain language of the statute, the BIPA establishes that it applies to each and every capture and use of Plaintiff’s fingerprint or hand scan. Id . at *14. The Appellate Court further opined that the legislative history and purpose, and the dictionary definitions of the BIPA’s key terms, compelled it to reject Defendants’ argument that the accrual date occurred with the first collection of Plaintiff’s finger or handprint. Id . at *22. The Appellate Court therefore held that Plaintiff’s allegations were sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. For these reasons, the Appellate Court reversed and remanded the trial court’s ruling on Defendants’ motion to dismiss. (v) Louisiana Allen, et al. v. Edwards, 2021 La. App. LEXIS 333 (La. App. March 12, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of indigent arrestees charged with non-capital offenses who received court-appointed counsel, brought a putative class action alleging that the public defense system in Louisiana failed to provide effective representation to the poor. Plaintiffs maintained that indigent arrestees would be denied the right to counsel until the structural limitations of the public defender system were removed. Therefore, Plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for constitutional violations of their rights to effective assistance of counsel under the U.S. and Louisiana Constitutions. The trial court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification and certified a class consisting of “all persons who are indigent and facing criminal charges punishable by a term of imprisonment brought by the State of Louisiana, excluding individuals charged with a capital offense, proceeding pro se , or represented by private counsel and juveniles whose cases are assigned to Juvenile Courts.” Id . at *5. On Defendants’ appeal to the Court of Appeal of Louisiana challenging the certification order, Defendants argued that Plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proof as to the requirement of commonality and typicality for class certification. The Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s certification order. The Court of Appeal held that the trial court erred in ruling that Plaintiffs had established the commonality requirement for class certification. The Court of Appeal reasoned that any inquiry into alleged constitutional defectiveness of an individual person’s representation, particularly based on alleged constitutional defectiveness through insufficient funding and resources of court-appointed counsel, must be decided on a case-by-case basis with a detailed examination of the specific facts and circumstances of the representation provided by counsel to the individual. As such, this individualized analysis necessarily caused the commonality requirement of class certification to fail, and therefore the Court of Appeal ruled that the trial court erred in concluding that commonality was met. Likewise, as to the requirement of typicality, the Court of Appeal held that the trial court erred in ruling that Plaintiffs had