George Preonas Quoted in the Daily Journal

An article in the December 7 Daily Journal (Wage-And-Hour Suits Are a Moving Target in Class Certification Process), addresses what many believe to be an inconsistent approach to class certification. A recent decision in favor of Islands Restaurants is thought to be the first denial of a wage-and-hour class certification in the restaurant industry in California. Such denials are few and far between, especially in light of the enormous increase in wage-and-hour class actions in the state over the last few years. Much of the debate among labor and employment attorneys has been about the certification of classes in the wage-and-hour class area.

"These are cases that don't really fit the traditional model of a class action," said George E. Preonas, a labor and employment partner at Seyfarth Shaw in Los Angeles. He said that the most prevalent type of class actions before wage and hour were discrimination cases.

"If you're married, you can't be a flight attendant, if you want to be a firefighter, you have to bench-press 150 pounds," Preonas listed. "With those kinds of relatively arbitrary rules, it's easy to have a class action to decide if those rules are fair or legal." Today's wage-and-hour cases, he added, are being brought in areas where the people in the class are not all alike.

That's called commonality in wage-and-hour class certifications, which is one of five burdens the plaintiffs have to meet in such cases. The others are numerosity; typicality, whether the claims of the representative are typical of the class; adequacy, whether the representative will fairly protect the interests of the class; and superiority, whether a class action is the best way to manage the case.