Court decisions resolving FLSA conditional certification motions are relatively commonplace.  However, far fewer decisions are available addressing FLSA class certification at the post-discovery stage of litigation.  These decisions usually arise in response to the defendant’s motion to “decertify” the FLSA class.

I recently wrote a brief responding to a decertification motion.  In the process, I came across four decisions in which federal courts in Pennsylvania have refused to decertify the FLSA class.  These decisions are briefly discussed below:

In Lockhart v. Westinghouse Credit Corp., 879 F.2d 43 (3d Cir. 1989), the Third Circuit applied §216(b)’s “similarly situated” requirement to an ADEA claim alleging that workers were discriminatorily terminated from their jobs.  Id. at 46.  The individual class members were “from different divisions of the company” and “different areas of the country” and “reported to different managers,” id. at 61 (Garth, J., dissenting), so, in opposing collective treatment, the company emphasized the “individualized explanations” for each plaintiff’s termination, id. at 62.  Even (more…)

It was a busy quarter for issuing opinions in FLSA collective actions by federal district courts within the Fifth Circuit.  These opinions touched on a number of different compensation related issues, from tip sharing to conditional certification of classes alleging that they worked off-the-clock.  Below is a brief summary of each of the opinions issued from March 16, 2008 through June 15, 2008 that concern FLSA collective actions. (more…)

On May 30, 2008, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued an important decision reaffirming the right of unionized prison guards employed in Scranton, Pennsylvania to pursue their Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) claim notwithstanding the existence of a collective bargaining agreement between their union and their employer.  In Gallagher, et al. v. Lackawanna County, 3:07-cv-00912-TIV, a group of Lackawanna County (PA) sergeants and corrections officers filed a federal court lawsuit asserting that, under the FLSA, they were entitled to full compensation, including overtime pay, for time spent attending daily pre-shift meetings and picking up radio batteries.  The county sought dismissal of the lawsuit, alleging that the existence of a collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) between the county and the prison prohibitted the plaintiffs from pursuing their FLSA lawsuit in federal court. (more…)

On April 4, 2008, a federal district judge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania issued an important opinion in Chabrier v. Wilmington Financial, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27761 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 4, 2008).  Chabrier is typical of many FLSA lawsuits that have been filed on behalf of loan officers in recent years.  In these lawsuits, the loan officers — who usually are paid on a commission basis – allege that they are entitled to overtime pay, while the mortgage or financial company asserts that the loan officers are exempt from FLSA coverage under either the administrative exemption or the outside salesperson exemption.  In Chabrier, the action was “conditionally certified” as an FLSA collective action and, after notice forms were sent to prospective class members, number loan officers joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs.  Discovery ensued and, at the close of discovery, the company sought to “decertify” the collective action, citing to purported diffences in the individual loan officers’ employment circumstances.  The district court disagreed, observing that all of the class members were paid under the same compensation package, shared the same job title, job duties, and job descriptions, and were supervised by the same managers.  The court reaffirmed the well-accepted principle that the FLSA does not require workers seeking overtime on a collective casis to share identical circumstances.  The court observed:  “A showing that there are elements of plaintiffs’ claims that differ, or that a small number of current plaintiffs are excluded, cannot override the similarities present in most plaintiffs’ claims and circumstances.”