Ahead of the class—Two cases serve as a warning for increased class-action employment litigation
✍ Scribed by Scott J. Witlin
- Book ID
- 102194826
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 58 KB
- Volume
- 31
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0745-7790
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Key Court Cases
Perhaps the greatest litigation risk that employers face today is the virtual explosion of class-based litigation. The risk comes from the magnitude of exposure that can result from taking even a seemingly minor exposure and multiplying it across an entire population of incumbents and former employees. The cases arise in a variety of contexts, including discrimination claims and statelaw violations. (Claims under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act are handled under a different mechanism.) The cases are also expensive to litigate because of the complexity of understanding the specific facts applicable to tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees and marshalling those facts to resist certification of the case as a class action or, in the event that fails, litigate the claims on a classwide basis. Thus, the first battle, the one over class certification, often is the most critical. Two recent decisions have made the burden even more difficult for employers.
THE WAL-MART CLASS CERTIFICATION
The case that gained the most attention nationally was the June 21, 2004, decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California certifying a class of approximately 1.5 million current and former female employees in over 3,500 Wal-Mart stores nationwide in a gender discrimination action. 1 According to the court's decision, although 65 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly employees are women, only 33 percent of all management employees are women. Moreover, the court found that only 14 percent of Wal-Mart's 3,500 store managers are women, even though the company emphasizes promotion from within.