Seyfarth Shaw’s Workplace Class Action Litigation Report featured in The Conference Board Review™ Magazine

“Why Good Companies Still Get Sued: Bad corporate behavior and complex employment laws—that’s why class-action lawyers are on the prowl”

The Conference Board, best known for its Consumer Confidence Index and the Leading Economic Indicators, cited Seyfarth Shaw’s Third Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report in the article, “Why Good Companies Still Get Sued,” published in the July/August issue of The Conference Board Review™ magazine.

The article reports that, “Approximately 90 percent of Fortune 500 firms have faced one or more class-action lawsuits filed by current and/or former employees. Seyfarth Shaw, one of the big firms specializing in company defense, each year summarizes class actions in state and federal courts. Its most recent report states, ‘Anecdotally, surveys of corporate counsel confirmed that workplace litigation—and especially class action and multiple plaintiff lawsuits—is the chief driving exposure driving corporate legal budget expenditure.”

“Is there reason to hope that class-action suits are beginning to run their course?” the article asks. The writer of the article quotes the firm’s Third Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report for the answer: “’Employment class action and collective action litigation,’ asserts law firm Seyfarth Shaw in a recent report, ‘will remain a source of significant financial exposure to employers well into the future.’” The article further reports, “Seyfarth Shaw’s annual report on such cases notes that in 2006, the most significant growth in wage-and-hour litigation was at the state court level, especially in California, Florida, Illinois, New jersey, New York, and Texas. Massed legal assaults on company policies will be replaced, in other words, by guerrilla warfare that will have to be fought on several fronts.”