In the recent decision of Wang v. Hearst Corporation, 2012 WL 2864524, the Court denied the defendant-employer\u2019s motion to strike the class and collective action allegations made by the plaintiff-employees and granted the plaintiff\u2019s cross-motion for conditional certification and court-authorized notice to potential class members pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act (\u201cFLSA\u201d), 29 U.S.C. \u00a7216(b).<\/p>\n
Plaintiff\u2019s proposed class consisted of interns who worked at 19 magazines, owned and operated by defendant, performing tasks necessary to the employer\u2019s operations such as answering phones, making deliveries, and organizing clothing and accessories.\u00a0 The plaintiff proposed to break down the employees into two classes: \u201c(1) an Intern Class comprised of unpaid and underpaid interns, and (2) a Deductions Class comprised of interns who received college credit for their internships.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Plaintiff claimed that defendant violated the FLSA and the New York Labor Law (\u201cNYLL\u201d) requirements and provisions pertaining to minimum wage, overtime, record keeping, spread-of-hours pay (requirement under the NYLL that employees must be paid an additional one hour\u2019s pay at minimum wage for each day during which they work more than 10 hours), and unlawful deductions.<\/p>\n
The Court noted that under the FLSA, an action may be brought by any one employee for and on behalf of herself and other employees who are \u201csimilarly situated.\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, the Court noted that at this point in the lawsuit, plaintiff only needs to prove that the potential class members \u201cmay be similarly situated.\u201d\u00a0 This is done by making a \u201cmodest factual showing\u201d that herself and the other potential class members were victims of the same policies or plans (required by defendant\u2019s) that violated the law.\u00a0 At this point in a case, a court only needs to consider a plaintiff\u2019s pleadings and affidavits, without taking the merits of the underlying claims into consideration.\u00a0 This Court found that the allegations and affidavits provided by plaintiff were enough to satisfy the \u201csimilarly situated\u201d burden.\u00a0 Specifically, the Court pointed to defendant\u2019s \u201cuniform determination that [all] interns were not employees,\u201d defendant\u2019s requirement that \u201call interns submit college credit letters,\u201d and defendant\u2019s consistent usage of all \u201cinterns to perform entry-level work with little supervision.\u201d\u00a0 However, the Court determined that during the discovery period, a more \u201cstringent factual determination\u201d as to whether the lawsuit should continue as a class action, can be made.<\/p>\n
Under the NYLL, class allegations are governed by Federal Rule of Civil Produce (\u201cFRCP\u201d) 23.\u00a0 Under these rules, motions to strike, particularly motions to strike class actions, are disfavored because such a motion forces a court to make a judgment on the class aspects of litigation before plaintiff\u2019s can complete their discovery.\u00a0 Moreover, motions to strike are \u201cusually denied where they raise arguments that would be considered on a motion for class certification.\u201d\u00a0 This Court held that plaintiff\u2019s potential NYLL class could not be certified yet since the requirements were not met.\u00a0 However, the Court also held that the motion to strike the class allegations under the NYLL is premature since only a small amount of discovery has occurred so far.\u00a0 Thus, the Court effectively denied the motion to strike the class at this beginning stage of the case, but retained the authority to grant such a motion after ample discovery by both parties takes place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the recent decision of Wang v. Hearst Corporation, 2012 WL 2864524, the Court denied the defendant-employer\u2019s motion to strike the class and collective action allegations made by the plaintiff-employees and granted the plaintiff\u2019s cross-motion for conditional certification and court-authorized notice to potential class members pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act (\u201cFLSA\u201d), 29 U.S.C. \u00a7216(b).
\nPlaintiff\u2019s proposed class consisted of interns who worked at 19 magazines, owned and operated by defendant, performing tasks necessary to the employer\u2019s operations such …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23,1,22,24,27,21,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-action","category-employment-law","category-flsa-2","category-minimum-wage-2","category-ny-labor-law","category-overtime-2","category-unpaid-wages-2"],"yoast_head":"\n