The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a defendant in a Fair Labor Standards Act case can avoid a collective action by offering full relief to the plaintiff before other employees join the case.
The practice in FLSA cases is for plaintiffs’ lawyers to file a lawsuit on behalf of the original named plaintiff, and then seek to expand the case into a collective action by issuing notices of right to opt-in to other similarly situated employees. To avoid the prospect of a collective action, employers sometimes choose to make an offer of full relief to the named plaintiff early in the case. They then argue that the case should be dismissed as moot, leaving no pending lawsuit for other employees to join.
This approach has received a mixed reception in the federal courts of appeals. The Ninth and Eleventh Circuits held that a case should be dismissed when the named plaintiffs’ claims have been resolved. The Third and Fifth Circuits have held that a collective action, like a class action under a Rule 23, takes on a life of its own when the case is filed and does not become moot when the named plaintiff’s claim is resolved. The arguments involve some arcane issues involving the distinction between collective actions and class actions and the “case or controversy” requirement under Article III of the Constitution.
In the case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear, the defendant company operates over 200 nursing homes and other facilities. The plaintiff worked for one of those homes for only several months. She filed suit claiming that the company violated the FLSA by making automatic deductions for meal breaks. To make the case go away quickly, the company responded to the court complaint by making an offer of judgment for $7,500 in alleged unpaid wages and liquidated damages, plus attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses. The district court granted the company’s motion to dismiss the case as moot, but the Third Circuit reversed, holding that the company could not preempt a collective action by “picking off” the named plaintiff.
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case, Genesis Healthcare Corporation v. Symczyk, in its term starting October 2012.
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