18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

178 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition amounts of time completing different tasks, and to determine a franchisee’s exact activities week-by-week to determine exempt status would require individual mini-trials such that class certification would not be appropriate. For these reasons, the Court denied Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. Hartsten, et al. v. Hyatt Corp., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS (C.D. Cal. May 25, 2021). Plaintiff, a hotel worker, brought a putative class action alleging various claims for violations of California Labor Code (“CLC”), including failure to pay all wages on discharge or layoff after termination from employment. Defendant instituted what it characterized as temporary layoffs of more than 6,000 employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Defendant did not provide a specific return to work date, and instead notified employees that it could take eight to twelve weeks for Defendant to return to normal business operations but did not commit to that timeline. Defendant provided no assurance that employees would be rehired, and many were not. Pursuant to Rule 23(b)(3), Plaintiff sought to certify a class of California-based employees consisting of three subclasses comprised of individuals : (i) whose employment was terminated and who were not paid for vested vacation time immediately upon cessation of their employment, (ii) whose employment was terminated and who were not paid for vested non- discretionary hotel room bonuses immediately upon cessation of their employment, and (iii) who were hourly- paid and/or non-exempt and who earned non-discretionary hotel room bonuses. The Court granted Plaintiff’s motion in its entirety. First, the Court determined that numerosity was met as there were thousands of individuals within each subclass. As to commonality, the Court agreed with Plaintiff that common questions existed including whether Defendant’s decision not to pay out vacation pay was unlawful and whether Defendant’s policy of not paying out hotel room benefits on termination was unlawful. With respect to the typicality requirement, the Court found that the nature of Plaintiff’s claim was clearly the same as any other class member and therefore the typicality was satisfied. Because there was no conflict between Plaintiff and putative class members and class counsel was experienced in litigating class actions and complex cases, the Court concluded that Plaintiffs also met the adequacy requirement. As to the predominance inquiry under Rule 23(b)(3), Defendant argued that individualized inquiries predominated as to both the vacation pay and hotel room claims. Defendant maintained that individualized inquiries predominated on whether furloughed employees suffered harm because some employees might have chosen to not to take some or all of their vacation wages at the time of furlough. However, the Court was unpersuaded as to this argument. It pointed out that the motives of class members were irrelevant to liability under the CLC. Further, under § 201 of the CLC, such wages should be paid "immediately" on discharge, and the evidence established that even employees who did request their vacation wages be paid out did not receive the wages immediately. The Court therefore concluded that individualized issues did not predominate as to the vacation pay claims. Likewise, the Court rejected Defendant’s argument that individualized issues predominated as to the hotel room claims because there was no way to determine the value of a stay in a hotel room. Finally, Defendant contested superiority on the basis that Plaintiff failed to offer a manageable trial plan relating to how to identify what value, if any, could be assigned to a complimentary hotel room night so that the trier of fact could determine whether there was class- wide liability. The Court disagreed. It noted that the value of a prospective hotel room stay constituted the same inquiry whether the case went forward as an individual or class action and hence the proposed action was manageable. In sum, the Court found that a class action was a superior method for resolving the class members’ claims. For these reasons the Court granted Plaintiff’s motion for class certification. Hunter, et al. v. Legacy Health, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 371 (D. Ore. Jan. 5, 2021). Plaintiff, a registered nurse (“RN”), filed a collective and class action alleging that Defendant failed to pay for overtime compensation, failed to pay all wages due upon separation of employment, and failed to pay all wages due in violation of the FLSA and Oregon law. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court granted. Until June of 2015, Defendant utilized a timekeeping system called the L-time system under which if employees were required to remain on-duty during 30-minute meal periods after they already worked six or more hours, they were to enter a code in the system to indicate that they did not receive a meal period. In such a circumstance, the employee would be paid for the missed meal period. Defendant thereafter switched to the MyTime timekeeping system under which non-exempt employees were automatically paid for their meal breaks unless they clocked-out for a full, uninterrupted 30 minutes. Id . at *5. Plaintiff contended that she and other similarly-situated registered nurses regularly worked more than 40 hours per week, and were required to perform work off-the-clock. Plaintiff further alleged that Defendant informed her that she could not clock-in before her scheduled start time or after her scheduled end time, even if she was required to work. Id . at *6.