Wage and Hour Defense Blog

By Amy Traub, Michael Kun, and Anna Kolontyrsky

As employers know, not only are FLSA collective actions more prevalent than ever, but they can be costly to defend or resolve.  In an attempt to bring quick closure to such cases, somedefendants have attempted to settle such claims with the individual plaintiff alone through a Rule 68 offer of judgment before a class has been conditionally certified.   

This strategy has come under attack.  And the United States Supreme Court will now determine whether it is permissible.

The United States Supreme Court has elected to review a Third Circuit ...

By Michael Kun

On Monday, June 25, 2011, the California Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Coito v. Superior Court, addressing the issue of whether a party in litigation could rely upon the work product doctrine to withhold witness statements obtained by its attorneys or the identities of persons who had given such statements. 

In short, while parties in California have long relied upon dicta in the Court of Appeal decision known as  Nacht v. Lewis for the proposition that such information is protected from disclosure by the work product doctrine, case-by-case ...

By: Michael Thompson

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSRs) are “outside salesmen” who are not entitled to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The high court’s ruling was predicated on its finding that, in the pharmaceutical industry’s “unique regulatory environment,” the commitments obtained by PSRs equate to traditional sales. Furthermore, the Supreme Court rebuked the Department of Labor (DOL) for “unfairly surprising” the industry by filing amicus briefs arguing that PSRs were ...

Epstein Becker Green is proud to announce that it has received the 2012 Chambers USA Award for Excellence in the Healthcare category. The results were announced at an awards dinner held on Thursday, June 7, 2012, in New York. Other firms nominated in the Healthcare category included Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP; Hogan Lovells US LLP; King & Spalding LLP; McDermott Will & Emery LLP; Ober Kaler Grimes & Shriver PC; and Proskauer Rose LLP.

The Chambers USA Awards for Excellence are based on research for the 2012 edition of Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business and reflect ...

By Michael S. Kun and Aaron F. Olsen

Earlier this week, the California Court of Appeals issued a ruling in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC that illustrates how the legal landscape in California has shifted in favor of enforcing arbitration agreements with class action waivers.   This, of course, is a welcome development for employers with operations in California, which have been besieged by class action lawsuits alleging wage-and-hour violations for the past 10+ years.

In 2006, the plaintiff in Iskanian filed a putative class action complaint against his ...

The Legal 500 United States, now in its 26th year, collects feedback from more than 180,000 in-house counsel and lawyers to select the leading law firms and lawyers in specific legal practice areas and industries.  The Legal 500 is an independent guide, and firms and individuals are recommended purely on merit. 

In 2012, both of Epstein Becker Green’s founding practices - Health Care and Life Sciences and Labor and Employment - as well as several individual attorneys, were recognized as leaders in their fields of practice.

For more information about the ranking and to read excerpts ...

By Kara Maciel and Aaron Olsen

After five years of litigation, a Los Angeles Superior Court has denied class certification of a class action against Joe’s Crab Shack Restaurants on claims that it managers were misclassified as exempt and denied meal and rest periods in violation of California law.  The court found that the plaintiffs had not established adequacy of class representatives, typicality, commonality or superiority, and emphasized a defendant’s due process right to provide individualized defenses to class members’ claims.

Because the case was handled by our ...

By Michael Thompson

The Seventh Circuit has ruled that pharmaceutical sales representatives are covered by the Administrative exemption to the FLSA because “the core function of the representatives’ duties, the physician office visits,” requires significant discretion and independent judgment. While other courts have applied a case specific analysis to determine the applicability of the Administrative exemption in this context, the Seventh Circuit’s analysis appears to be applicable to virtually all sales representatives in the pharmaceutical ...

By Adam Abrahms

Outside of California, employers frequently enter into agreements with non-exempt salaried employees that provide for a set weekly salary that includes overtime for a specific number of hours and is based on a defined regular rate of pay.  For example, an employer may agree to pay an employee as salary of $950 a week for 45 hours of work resulting in the employee being paid $20/hour for the first 40 hours and time and half ($30) for the overtime hours.  These agreements typically provide that if an employee works more than the established hours, the employee would be paid ...

By Kara Maciel and Casey Cosentino

The restaurant and hospitality industries are no strangers to the tidal wave of wage and hour class action lawsuits. Restaurants and hotel operators located in states with employee-friendly laws like Massachusetts, New York, and California, are particularly vulnerable. This vulnerability was recently confirmed on April 30, 2012, when Texas Roadhouse, Inc. agreed to pay $5 million to settle a putative class action suit filed by wait staff employees from nine restaurants in Massachusetts.

In Crenshaw, et. al, v. Texas Roadhouse, Inc. (No ...