Seyfarth Shaw's 11th Annual Workplace Class Action Report: Looking Back at 2014 and Ahead to 2015

Address

Webinar

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Central
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Mountain
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Pacific

Cost

There is no cost to attend this program, however, registration is required.

Across the country, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend continued to serve as the most influential “pivot points” for Rule 23 decisions in 2014, having a wide-ranging impact on virtually all class actions pending in federal and state courts. Across the lower federal and state courts in 2014, Wal-Mart was cited 571 times and Comcast was cited 261 times, which in turn generated a bevy of new case law.

Against this backdrop, the webinar will outline a number of key trends for employers in 2015, including:

The Wal-Mart and Comcast decisions reshaped settlement strategies: while employment discrimination and wage and hour class action settlements stayed flat, governmental enforcement litigation settlements dropped to their lowest levels in a decade and ERISA settlements spiked nearly tenfold from 2013;
Wage and hour litigation represents the “prime” litigation risk in the workplace, as case filings increased yet again in 2014;
FLSA collective actions and state law wage and hour class actions produced more decisions than any other area of complex employment litigation in 2014;
The Department of Labor and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continued their aggressive litigation approaches in 2014 with mixed results, marked by several high-profile losses in the federal courts and their lowest aggregate settlement recoveries since 2006; and,
A bright spot: 2014 was a “transformative” year for the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”) to the benefit of employers, solidifying defense strategies to secure removal of class actions to federal courts.