18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 423 vaccine requirement, over 4,000 employees would be required to get vaccinated, and no testing alternative was provided. Therefore, employees who declined to get vaccinated would be terminated absent a religious or medical exemption. Plaintiffs contended that the vaccine requirements violated state labor laws and their collective bargaining agreements by failing to negotiate the terms of the vaccine policy. The Court ruled that it must consider “whether the implementation of the vaccine mandate before resolution of the important legal issues involved could result in irreparable harm to an employee coerced into complying to maintain their livelihood." Id . at 2. The Court also encouraged the parties to engage in policy negotiations or submit the dispute arbitration. For these reasons, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order barring the vaccine requirement. (x) Missouri Hootselle, et al. v. Missouri Department Of Corrections, 624 S.W.3d 123 (Mo. May 21, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of corrections officers, filed a class action alleging that Defendants failed to compensate for pre-shift and post-shift work. The trial court awarded the class $113 million plus post-judgment interest for breach of contract. On appeal, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed in part and vacated in part the trial court’s ruling. Defendant argued several portions of the trial court’s ruling, particularly that it erred when overruling Defendant’s motion to decertify the class. Defendant argued that the class failed to meet Rule 52.08(b)(3)’s predominance and superiority requirements because individual questions of class members’ damages predominated over common questions of liability. In support of this argument, Defendant pointed to deposition testimony to show individual class members spent varying amounts of time performing the activities for which they sought compensation. Id . at 133. The time spent performing the activities varied among each of the 21 facilities that employed the corrections officers and among corrections officers within each individual facility. Id . Defendant argued that it provided evidence that the method of common proof ( i.e ., electronic entry and exit logs) used to compute the time spent on these activities, was unreliable and tracked only time spent within the security envelope, not time spent working, and the officers often logged entry into a facility and then socialized or attended to other personal matters. Id . The Supreme Court held that the trial court’s order – overruling the motion to decertify the class – found that the superiority requirement was met because decertification would create the need for thousands of mini-trials that would decide identical issues. Id . at 134. The Supreme Court thus held that the trial court’s decision was not clearly against the weight of the evidence, nor was it arbitrary or unreasonable. The Supreme Court concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in overruling Defendant’s motion to decertify the class. However, the Supreme Court found that the trial court erred when it determined that all Plaintiffs’ pre-shift and post-shift activities were compensable principal activities that must be compensated under the terms of the labor agreements incorporating the FLSA. The Supreme Court thus affirmed in part the ruling, and vacated as to the finding that the pre-shift and post-shift work time was compensable. (xi) New Jersey Baskin, et al. v. P.C. Richard & Son, LLC, 2021 N.J. LEXIS 368 (N.J. Jan. 4, 2021). Plaintiffs brought a putative class action on behalf of themselves and other similarly-situated consumers to whom Defendants provided an electronically-printed receipt listing the expiration date of the consumer’s credit or debit card in violation of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (“FACTA”). Plaintiffs alleged their injury was exposure to an increased risk of identity theft and credit/debit card fraud. In their complaint Plaintiffs sought an order certifying the class pursuant to New Jersey law, as well as statutory and punitive damages and costs and attorneys’ fees. As to numerosity, Plaintiffs alleged that there were, at a minimum, two thousand persons that comprised the proposed class. The complaint also asserted that common questions, including whether Defendants’ receipts violated the FACTA, whether Defendants’ conduct was willful, and whether the class was entitled to damages, predominated over any individual questions. The complaint further alleged that a class action was superior to other means of adjudicating these claims because the prospective damages were too small to incentivize individual litigation and because numerous small claims gave rise to inconsistent results, redundancy, and delay. Defendants brought a motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint, which the trial court granted based on its determination that Plaintiffs could not satisfy the numerosity, predominance, or superiority requirements for class certification. On Plaintiffs’ appeal, the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal of the class action claims. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of New Jersey Court granted Plaintiffs’ further appeal pertaining to the class certification issues. The Supreme Court held that the trial court erred in