PRACTITIONER BLOG
Read our analyses of developments in Impact Litigation and stay current on class action law
Epic Systems And The Erosion Of Federal Class Actions
Epic Systems expanded Concepcion, concluding that federal labor law does not block arbitration class waivers, rendering them permissible in the employment context, too. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that this additional barrier will lead to the under-enforcement of employment law stemming from this restriction on collective power, as has already happened in the consumer context.
New Teeth For California's 'Suitable Seating' Law
On April 4, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided Kilby v. CVS, which adopted a very worker-friendly construction of the state’s century-old “suitable seating law,” and will help ensure that, going forward, seating cases will proceed under California's Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) on a broad class-wide or representative action basis.
Since 1911, California law has guaranteed seats to employees “when the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats” (although until 1973, only women were protected).
Top 10 Tips For Your Next Class Action Settlement Mediation
It is the day we are all waiting for. Game Day. Mediation. Your firm has spent 1,246.7 hours on the case so far, but everything will happen in these 12 hours. By the end of the day, you are so emotionally exhausted from the mediator pounding on you, and so happy to have the mediator come in with a number that you can tolerate, that you walk out with a pending mediator’s proposal that only says the gross dollar value of the global settlement. Perhaps you leave the mediation with a handshake agreement, but without nailing down the details of the Memorandum of Understanding. Oops. The devil was in those particular details. Everyone who has negotiated a class action settlement has probably had some term he or she forgot to address at mediation, or in the MOU, that returned in drafting the “final” agreement as a big headache and put the deal at risk. I have. I have thought, at many class action mediations, “I wish I had a checklist so I would remember all the key terms.” Here it is...