18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

436 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition the Bharti/Friedman Rubin Agreement that acknowledged that Bharti was going to share his fee with Teller. The Court of Appeals agreed with Teller that the requirement that the fee agreement be confirmed in writing did not require that Plaintiff physically sign the Bharti/Teller Agreement. However, the Court of Appeals found RPC § 1.5(e)(1)(ii) required that there be something in writing that conveyed that Plaintiff was actually aware of and agreed to the terms of the fee division agreement. Because nothing in the record supported a finding that Plaintiff agreed in writing to the attorneys’ agreement, the Court of Appeal held that the attorneys’ agreement violated public policy, was unenforceable as a matter of law, and could not be the trial court’s basis for determining what fees to award to Teller. For these reasons, the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s order awarding fees to Teller. (xxi) West Virginia Justice, et al. v. West Virginia AFL-CIO , 2021 W.Va. LEXIS 652 (W.Va. Nov. 22, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of labor unions, associations, and individual union members, filed a class action and sought a preliminary injunction seeking to enjoin West Virginia officials from enforcing the West Virginia Paycheck Protection Act (“HB 2009”), which prohibits state employers from continuing to deduct union dues and employee association membership fees from public employees’ wages as they have in the past. Plaintiffs argued that the law violated certain of their constitutional rights and that its enforcement would cause them irreparable harm. The trial court agreed and granted the motion. On appeal, the West Virginia Supreme Court reversed and remanded the trial court’s ruling. The Supreme Court concluded that the likelihood of success on the merits was low. The Supreme Court explained that although Plaintiffs contended that the HB 2009 violated certain constitutional rights, they failed to provide relevant authority that supported their claim that HB 2009 violated their speech, associational, and equal protection rights. The Supreme Court noted that numerous federal case law authorities had addressed challenges to state laws regarding deduction of union dues from public employees’ wages brought under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and had found such laws to be facially neutral ones that did not prohibit unions or their members from espousing their views. Id . at *14. The Supreme Court also ruled that the trial court erred in finding that HB 2009 substantially impaired a contractual relationship, since Plaintiffs failed to show that a contractual relationship existed. Thus, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court erred when it concluded that Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that HB 2009 substantially impaired contractual rights. For these reasons, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the trial court’s ruling. State Of West Virginia Ex. rel. Amerisourcebergen Drug Corp., et al. v. The Honorable Alan D. Moats, 2021 W.Va. LEXIS 330 (W.Va. June 11, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of various cities, counties, hospitals, and the State of West Virginia, sued manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioid pain medication. The cases were a part of the Opioid Litigation which consisted of more than 80 lawsuits pending before the Mass Litigation Panel in West Virginia. In two separate petitions that were consolidated on appeal, Defendants petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia for a writ of prohibition seeking to prohibit enforcement of the Mass Litigation Panel’s rulings that: (i) Defendants did not have a right to a jury trial on Plaintiffs’ public nuisance claims (liability only); and (ii) those same public nuisance claims were not subject to the 2015 amendments to West Virginia’s comparative fault statute. Plaintiffs urged the Supreme Court not to disturb the Panel’s rulings. The Supreme Court granted in part and denied in part the petitions. First, the Supreme Court held that the Panel did not clearly err when it found that the 2015 amendments did not apply to the public nuisance claims. However, the Supreme Court concluded that the Panel had erred by not safeguarding Defendants’ right to try issues common to Plaintiffs’ public nuisance claims and their legal claims to a jury. In sum, the Supreme Court denied the writ of prohibition that challenged the Panel’s order as to the ruling that public nuisance claims were not legal claims for damages that would trigger the constitutional jury trial right or that were subject to the 2015 amendments to the West Virginia comparative fault statute, because the Panel’s ruling was not clear-cut or plainly in contravention of a clear legal mandate. At the same time, the Supreme Court granted the writ of prohibition to the extent that Defendants had demonstrated that extraordinary relief was warranted to preserve their right to try Plaintiffs’ legal claims to a jury. To the extent that the public nuisance liability determination and Plaintiffs’ legal claims presented common and overlapping issues among the claims, the Supreme Court ruled that the order of trial must be such that the jury first determine those common issues. For these reasons, the Supreme Court granted in part and denied in part the petitions for writ of prohibition.