Seyfarth Synopsis: At 878 pages, Seyfarth's 14th Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report analyzes 1,408 rulings and is our biggest and most voluminous Report ever.
Click here to access the microsite featuring all the Report highlights. You can read about the four major trends of the past year, order your copy of the eBook, and download Chapters 1 and 2 on the 2018 Executive Summary and key class action settlements.
The Report was featured today in an exclusive article in the Wall Street Journal. Click here to read the coverage!
The Report is the sole compendium in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to workplace class action litigation, and has become the "go to" research and resource guide for businesses and their corporate counsel facing complex litigation. We were again honored this year with a review of our Report by Employment Practices Liability Consultant Magazine ("EPLiC"). Here is what EPLiC said: "The Report is a definitive 'must-have' for legal research and in-depth analysis of employment-related class action litigation. Anyone who practices in this area, whether as an attorney, a business executive, a risk manager, an underwriter, a consultant, or a broker cannot afford to be without it. Importantly, the Report is the only publication of its kind in the United States. It is the sole compendium that analyzes workplace class actions from 'A to Z.'" Furthermore, EPLiC recognized our Report as the "state-of-the-art word" on workplace class action litigation. You can read more about the review here.
The 2018 Report analyzes rulings from all state and federal courts – including private plaintiff class actions and collective actions, and government enforcement actions – in the substantive areas of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. It also features chapters on EEOC pattern or practice rulings, state law class certification decisions, and non-workplace class action rulings that impact employers. The Report also analyzes the leading class action settlements for 2017 for employment discrimination, wage & hour, ERISA class actions, and statutory workplace laws, as well as settlements of government enforcement actions, both with respect to monetary values and injunctive relief provisions.
We hope our loyal blog readers will enjoy it!
Executive Summary
The prosecution of workplace class action litigation by the plaintiffs' bar has increased exponentially over the past decade. More often than not, class actions pose unique "bet-the-company" risks for employers. An adverse judgment in a class action has the potential to bankrupt a business and adverse publicity can eviscerate its market share. Likewise, the on-going defense of a class action can drain corporate resources long before the case even reaches a decision point.
Companies that do business in multiple states are also susceptible to "copy-cat" class actions, whereby plaintiffs' lawyers create a domino effect of litigation filings that challenge corporate policies and practices in numerous jurisdictions at the same time. Hence, workplace class actions can adversely impact a corporation's business operations, jeopardize or cut short the careers of senior management, and cost millions of dollars to defend. For these reasons, risks from workplace class actions are at the top of the list of challenges that keep business leaders up late at night.
Skilled plaintiffs' class action lawyers and governmental enforcement litigators are not making this challenge any easier for companies. They are continuing to develop new theories and approaches to the successful prosecution of complex employment litigation. New rulings by federal and state courts have added to this patchwork quilt of compliance problems and risk management issues.
In turn, the events of the past year in the workplace class action world demonstrate that the array of litigation issues facing businesses are continuing to accelerate at a rapid pace while also undergoing significant change. Notwithstanding the transition to new leadership in the White House in 2017, governmental enforcement litigation pursued by the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") continued to manifest an aggressive "push-the-envelope" agenda by agencies, with regulatory oversight of workplace issues continuing as a high priority.
The combination of these factors are challenging businesses to integrate their litigation and risk mitigation strategies to navigate these exposures. These challenges are especially acute for businesses in the context of complex workplace litigation.
Adding to this mosaic of challenges in 2018 is the continuing evolution in federal policies based on a new political party occupying the White House for part of 2017. Furthermore, while changes to government priorities started on Inauguration Day and are on-going, others are being carried out by new leadership at the agency level who were appointed in the fourth quarter of this past year. As expected, many changes represent stark reversals in policy that are sure to have a cascading impact on private class action litigation. While predictions about the future of workplace class action litigation may cover a wide array of potential outcomes, the one sure bet is that change is inevitable and corporate America will continue to face new litigation challenges.
Key Trends Of 2017
An overview of workplace class action litigation developments in 2017 reveals four key trends.
First, the monetary value of the top workplace class action settlements rose dramatically in 2017. These numbers increased over past years, even after they had reached all-time highs in 2014 to 2016. The plaintiffs' employment class action bar and governmental enforcement litigators were exceedingly successful in monetizing their case filings into large class-wide settlements, and they did so at decidedly higher values than in previous years. The top ten settlements in various employment-related class action categories totaled $2.72 billion in 2017, an increase of over $970 million from $1.75 billion in 2016. Furthermore, settlements of employment discrimination class actions experienced over a three-fold increase in value; statutory workplace class actions saw nearly a five-fold increase; and government enforcement litigation registered nearly a ten-fold increase. Whether this is the beginning of a long-range trend or a short-term aberration remains to be seen as 2018 unfolds, but the determinative markers suggest this upward trend will rise further in 2018, at least insofar as private plaintiff class actions are concerned.
Second, while federal and state courts issued many favorable class certification rulings for the plaintiffs' bar in 2017, evolving case law precedents and new defense approaches resulted in better outcomes for employers in opposing class certification requests. Plaintiffs' lawyers continued to craft refined class certification theories to counter the more stringent Rule 23 certification requirements established in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011). As a result, in the areas of employment discrimination and ERISA class actions, the plaintiffs' bar scored well in securing class certification rulings in federal courts in 2017 (over comparative figures for 2016). Class actions were certified in significant numbers in "magnet" jurisdictions that continued to issue decisions that encourage – or, in effect, force – the resolution of large numbers of claims through class-wide mechanisms. Yet, while the sheer volume of wage & hour certification decisions in 2017 increased as compared to last year, employers actually fared better in litigating those class certification motions in federal court than last year. Of the 257 wage & hour certification decisions in 2017, plaintiffs won 170 of 233 conditional certification rulings (approximately 73%), but lost 15 of 24 decertification rulings (approximately 63%). By way of comparison, there were 224 wage & hour certification decisions in 2016, where plaintiffs won 147 of 195 conditional certification rulings (approximately 76%) and lost 13 of 29 decertification rulings (approximately 45%). In sum, employers beat slightly more first stage conditional certification motions in 2017, and dramatically increased their odds – a jump of 18% – of fracturing cases with successful decertification motions.
Third, filings and settlements of government enforcement litigation in 2017 did not reflect a head-snapping pivot from the ideological pro-worker (or anti-big business) outlook of the Obama Administration to a pro-business, less regulation/litigation viewpoint of the Trump Administration. Instead, as compared to 2016, government enforcement litigation actually increased in 2017. As an example, the EEOC alone brought 184 lawsuits in 2017 as compared to 86 lawsuits in 2016. Further, the settlement value of the top ten settlements in government enforcement cases jumped dramatically – from $52.3 million in 2016 to $485.25 million in 2017. The explanations for this phenomenon are wide and varied, and include the time-lag between Obama-appointed enforcement personnel vacating their offices and Trump-appointed personnel taking charge of agency decision-making power; the number of lawsuits "in the pipeline" that were filed during the Obama Administration that came to conclusion in the past year; and the "hold-over" effect whereby Obama-appointed policy-makers remained in their positions long enough to continue their enforcement efforts before being replaced in the last half of 2017. This trend is critical to employers, as both the DOL and the EEOC have had a focus on "big impact" lawsuits against companies and "lead by example" in terms of areas that the private plaintiffs' bar aims to pursue. As 2018 opens, it appears that the content and scope of enforcement litigation undertaken by the DOL and the EEOC in the Trump Administration will tilt away from the pro-employee/anti-big business mindset of the previous Administration. Trump appointees at the DOL and the EEOC are slowly but surely "peeling back" on positions previously advocated under the Obama Administration. As a result, it appears inevitable that the volume of government enforcement litigation and value of settlement numbers from those cases will decrease in 2018. The ultimate effect, however, may well prompt the private plaintiffs' class action bar to "fill the void" and expand the volume of workplace litigation pursued against employers over the coming year as the DOL and the EEOC adjust their litigation enforcement activities.
Fourth and finally, class action litigation increasingly has been shaped and influenced by recent rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past several years, the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted more cases for review – and issued more rulings – that have impacted the prosecution and defense of class actions and government enforcement litigation. The past year continued that trend, with several key decisions on complex employment litigation and class action issues that were arguably more pro-business than decisions in past years. More cases also were accepted for review in 2017 that are positioned for rulings in 2018, including what may be the most high-stakes issue impacting employers since the Wal-Mart ruling in 2011 – the Epic Systems, Murphy Oil, and E & Y trilogy of cases on the legality of workplace arbitration agreements with class action waivers. The ruling expected in the Epic System, Murphy Oil, and E & Y cases in 2018 may well change the class action playing field in profound ways. Coupled with the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and potential additional appointments to the Supreme Court by President Trump in 2018 and beyond, litigation dynamics may well be re-shaped in ways that further change the playbook for prosecuting and defending class actions.
Implications For Employers
The one constant in workplace class action litigation is change. More than any other year in recent memory, 2017 was a year of great change in the landscape of Rule 23. As these issues play out in 2018, additional chapters in the class action playbook will be written.
The lesson to draw from 2017 is that the private plaintiffs' bar and government enforcement attorneys at the state level are apt to be equally, if not more, aggressive in 2018 in bringing class action and collective action litigation against employers.
These novel challenges demand a shift of thinking in the way companies formulate their strategies. As class actions and collective actions are a pervasive aspect of litigation in Corporate America, defending and defeating this type of litigation is a top priority for corporate counsel. Identifying, addressing, and remediating class action vulnerabilities, therefore, deserves a place at the top of corporate counsel's priorities list for 2018.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
