Fifth Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report

The Fifth Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report by Seyfarth Shaw LLP analyzes the foremost class action and collective action decisions of 2008 involving claims against employers in federal and state courts. The key class action and collective action settlements over the past year are also analyzed, both in terms of gross settlement dollars in private plaintiff and government-initiated lawsuits, as well as injunctive relief provisions in consent decrees. The Firm's Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report is the only annual compendium analyzing workplace class action rulings on a national basis. The 2009 Report analyzes 650 decisions in its 665 pages. “This year’s report illustrates that the trend we’ve followed and analyzed for the past few years continues unabated: there is an explosion in class action and collective action litigation involving workplace issues,” said J. Stephen Poor, Chair and Managing Partner of Seyfarth Shaw. “The present downturn in the economic climate is likely to fuel even more lawsuits, and the financial risks in this type of employment litigation can be enormous.”

Rulings examined in the report were from lawsuits filed in federal courts under 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 a host of other federal statutes applicable to workplace issues. The Report also analyzes class action and collective action rulings involving claims brought against employers in all fifty state court systems, including decisions pertaining to employment laws, wage and hour laws, and breach of employment contract actions. Finally, the Report also discusses important federal and state court rulings in non-workplace cases which are significant in their impact on the defense of workplace class action litigation.

“Business executives and corporate counsel have come to rely on Seyfarth Shaw’s Workplace Class Action Litigation Report as their ‘go-to’ reference guide to explain the latest trends in complex employment litigation,” stated Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., General Editor of the Report and Co-Chair of the Complex Discrimination Litigation Practice Group. “Employers can expect that class action and collective action lawsuits increasingly will become ever more sophisticated and combine claims under multiple statutes, thereby requiring the defense bar to have a cross-disciplinary understanding of substantive employment law.”

View press release for more information. View the 2009 Report's Introduction below for an overview of workplace class action trends.

The 2009 report is available to clients of the firm and interested corporate counsel. To request a free copy of the report, please click the button below. For questions, please e-mail ClassActionReport@seyfarth.com.