A federal judge refused to reconsider Goldman Sachs’ bid to compel individual arbitration against one of the lead plaintiffs in a putative class action lawsuit claiming the bank subscribes to an “outdated corporate culture” of bias against women.
The Honorable Nicholas Garaufis, a district court judge from the Eastern District of New York entered an order in the NYC Firefighters case, applying and, to a degree, limiting, the Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart. He certified subclasses under Rule 23(b)(3), including claims for compensatory damages.
Costco Wholesale Corp. may be able to block women accusing it of gender bias from suing as a group because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a discrimination suit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The women sued Costco in 2004, accusing the largest U.S. warehouse-club chain of limiting promotions of female employees to assistant general manager and general manager by failing to post such job openings. They won the right to sue as a group
I was interviewed on the Think Out Loud radio program on Oregon Public Broadcasting on June 24, 2011. The topic was the recent class action decision by the US Supreme Court in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, which I recently blogged about. If you click on the link below, and when you get to the OPB website, click on the arrow, the podcast recording of the program will play. http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/whither-women-wal-mart/.
Best Buy and civil rights lawyers on June 21, 2011, announced a proposed settlement of an employment discrimination class action brought on behalf of women and minority employees of Best Buy. The settlement remains subject to court approval. Through this settlement, Best Buy agrees to changes to its personnel policies and procedures that will enhance the equal employment opportunities of the thousands of women, African Americans, and Latinos employed by Best Buy nationwide.
On June 20, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes reversed a class certification order in a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart filed on behalf of current and former female employees of Wal-Mart. As reported earlier on this blog, the trial court had certified a class representing approximately 1.5 million female employees at Wal-Mart stores throughout the country. The workers sued the nation’s largest private employer for sex discrimination in Wal-Mart’s pay,
In a recent decision entitled Monroe v. FTS USA, LLC, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11846 (W.D. Tenn. Feb. 7, 2011), the district court refused to decertify a class of over 300 cable installers who alleged that they worked off-the-clock. In particular, the court summarized the installers’ allegations as follows: “Specifically, Plaintiffs have presented evidence indicating that Defendants (1) altered technicians’ timesheets to eliminate or understate overtime hours; (2) directed technicians to either not report or
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Sears Roebuck & Co. in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Riverside (entitled Nikola Lovig v. Sears Roebuck & Co.). The complaint alleges that Sears Roebuck failed to pay certain hourly and non-exempt employees (including certain Sears Roebuck technicians) minimum wages, overtime pay, and premium wages, purportedly in violation of California law, according to the Sears Roebuck overtime pay and wage and hour class action lawsuit complaint.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against The Huffington Post.com, which is now owned by AOL Inc. This appears to be a cutting edge case, as the complaint states that it seeks to address the important issues of (a) whether in the digital age, profitable digital media sites should be required to compensate the creators of valuable content from which such sites derive substantial revenue, and (b) if so, how the creators of content
A class action settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit against AT&T in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (entitled Buccellato v. AT&T Operations, Inc., Case No. C10-00463-LHK). The lawsuit alleged that AT&T misclassified the Class Members as exempt from the overtime pay requirements of federal and state law, and consequently failed to pay them overtime pay.
The Supreme Court recently heard argument in the employment discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart that I have written about before on this blog. It is the largest in American history. Wal-Mart is also one of the largest private employers in American history. If the Supreme Court rejects this suit, it will send a chilling message that some companies are too big to be held accountable.
On March 16, 2011, a Northern California woman filed a nationwide class action in the United States District Court in San Francisco charging that John Deere’s landscaping division discriminates against women who seek entry level customer service, sales and shipping and receiving positions. The case is entitled Artis v. Deere & Co. (Civ 10-05289 WHA). The suit charges Deere, a leading farm, agricultural equipment and landscaping company with over 50,000 employees, with systematically denying such
A federal judge from the Western District of Washington has preliminarily approved a $1.45 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging that Premera Blue Cross failed to pay overtime to a group of tech workers. The class-action lawsuit filed last year in U.S. District Court in Seattle, alleged that the Mountlake Terrace-based health insurance company and its subsidiaries had misclassified about 133 tech support workers as exempt from overtime pay.
A veteran Cigna Corp. manager sued the U.S. health insurer on March 3, 2011, saying it unfairly blocks female employees from promotions and higher-paying jobs. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, seeks $100 million in damages and asks for class-action status.
On January 20, 2011, Wal-Mart filed its opening merits brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case mentioned several times earlier in this blog. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart asserts that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion is not consistent with the requirements of Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 23(a), because the “Class members – potentially millions of women supervised by tens of thousands of different managers and employed in thousands of different stores throughout the
The Human Resources Manager of Toshiba America Nuclear Energy (TANE) Corporation filed a class action employment lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York today in an effort to end systemic, companywide gender discrimination against herself and other female employees by TANE and its parent corporation, Toshiba America, Inc.
As indicated earlier in this blog, this term the U.S. Supreme Court will be focusing on more issues involved in class actions than it has in decades. It granted certiorari in the now well known case of Dukes v. Wal-Mart, Inc., and should be issuing an opinion this term in the equally well known case entitled AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. Both of these cases from the Ninth Circuit were decided in favor of the plaintiffs,
This morning, on December 6, 2010, the US Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case on the first question raised in the petition (whether Rule 23(b)(2) certification may include monetary remedies) and a second question that the court fashioned (whether class certification under Rule 23(b)(2) is consistent with Rule 23(a). In Dukes v. Wal-Mart, Inc., 603 F.3d 571 (9th Cir. 2010), the Ninth Circuit affirmed the certification of a class of female
As mentioned previously on this blog, in September 2010, Wal-Mart filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart certifying a class of more than a million current and former female workers who allege they were discriminated against. On October 21, 2010, the counsel for the class of Wal-Mart employees filed an Opposition to Wal-Mart’s Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari.
As I suggested in a post on this blog in June, on August 25, 2010, Wal-Mart filed a petition asking the US Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart to allow that case to proceed as a class action. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court’s decision to certify a sex discrimination class action involving more than one million current and former female workers.
