18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 603 advertising/ad, job applicants, recent college grad or graduate, over qualified, over 40, years of experience, age limitation, cap, age cap and applicant." Id . at *10. The Court agreed with Plaintiff that a genuine dispute of material fact existed because the EEOC should not have limited its search to exclude responsive documents prior to 10 years of the request. The Court was unpersuaded by the EEOC’s argument that its search was adequate because of the high volume of records it released and concluded that the EEOC had not established that its search was adequate. Additionally, the Court found that the EEOC had not met its burden to show that it had properly withheld several documents under FOIA Exemptions 5, 6 and 7(C). Accordingly, the Court denied the EEOC’s motion for summary judgment pursuant to Rule 56. Ohio State Troopers, et al. v. Point Blank Enterprises, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 29112 (11th Cir. Sept. 27, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of police officers, filed a class action alleging violations of various consumer protection statutes and breached express and implied warranties for selling bullet-proof vests with allegedly defective "hook and loop" straps. Id . at *2. The District Court denied class certification and dismissed the complaint on the grounds that Plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of satisfying the requirements of Rule 23. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the District Court’s ruling. Plaintiffs asserted that defects in the vests’ causes the hook and loop fasteners to lose efficacy over time, eventually causing the vest to slip during wear, thereby potentially exposing the wearers to danger. Id . at *3. The District Court held that Plaintiffs failed to meet the commonality requirement of Rule 23(a) because no common evidence of a class-wide defect existed. The District Court also determined that individual issues predominated over common ones such that Plaintiffs failed to meet the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b). The Eleventh Circuit agreed with the District Court that individualized inquiries would be required to resolve how each class member used their bulletproof vest and whether they experienced the alleged defect. The Eleventh Circuit therefore ruled that Plaintiffs failed to establish that there were questions of fact or law common to the class that have the capacity to "generate common answers" and were "capable of class-wide resolution." Id . at *4. For these reasons, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying class certification and affirmed the ruling. Olson, et al. v. Bonta, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133111 (N.D. Cal. July 16, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of drivers for Uber and Postmates, filed a class action alleging that California’s A.B. 5 law, or the three-prong worker classification test, violated the equal protection, due process, and contract clauses of the U.S. and California Constitutions. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ second amended complaint, which the Court granted. Plaintiffs contended that A.B. 5 unlawfully targeted some gig-economy workers over others. The Court rejected Plaintiffs’ contentions and found that the workers were not being singled-out. Plaintiffs contended that the newly enacted Proposition 22, which exempted app workers from A.B. 5, supported their allegations that A.B. 5 was unconstitutional. The Court disagreed with Plaintiffs’ position. It found that the new exemptions did not prove that the original law was irrational and therefore unconstitutional. The Court also ruled that the law was much broader than sweeping solely gig-economy workers and companies in its reach. The Court opined that although Uber was discussed frequently in public comments and forums when discussing the new law, the actual companies and industries explicitly covered by the statute were much for far-reaching. The Court reasoned that because Plaintiffs already amended their claims once and added no new substantive claims, further amendment would be futile. For these reasons, the Court granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss. Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, et al. v. Holcomb, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 6850 (7th Cir. March 9, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of truck operators and entities that owned and operated heavy trucks, filed a class action alleging that Defendant’s decision to allow a toll raise of 35% for heavy trucks in exchange for $1 billion in revenue violated the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution by falling principally on interstate traffic. The toll road in question, the Indiana Toll Road, runs 156 miles across northern Indiana from the border with Ohio on the east to the Chicago Skyway on the west. Id . at *2. Plaintiffs alleged that 50% of the heavy trucks that use the toll road crossed state lines and that 90% had crossed state lines on at least one occasion. The District Court dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that Indiana, as a market participant, was exempt from the rules ordinarily applied through commerce jurisprudence. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the District Court’s ruling. Plaintiffs asserted that toll roads were different because the maintenance of roads was an "essential governmental function" that lacked a private equivalent. Id . at *5. The Seventh Circuit reasoned the Constitution did not establish the federal judiciary as a regulatory commission, after the fashion of utility rate regulators that try to keep natural monopolies’ charges in line with consumers’ benefits. Id . at *6. Further, the