Commercial Litigation Update

Many employers rely on arbitration agreements with class action waivers, provisions that prevent employees from filing or joining collective lawsuits, to manage wage and hour litigation risk. That strategy works reliably in states like California where courts typically uphold arbitration agreements with class action waivers. In Washington, however, courts disfavor class action waivers and arbitration agreements generally, and will invalidate such agreements when employees lacked a meaningful opportunity to review and agree to their terms. This refusal to enforce arbitration agreements or class action waivers creates a gap exposing employers to potential class action risk .[1]

[1] See Burnett v. Pagliacci Pizza, Inc., 196 Wash. 2d 38 (2020) (refusing to enforce arbitration clause in employee handbook when employer failed to provide separate, conspicuous notice).

A recent amendment to Washington’s Commercial Electronic Mail Act (CEMA), scheduled to take effect on June 11, 2026, has prompted a surge of class action filings. The amendment revises the statutory standard for actionable violations and reduces statutory damages, spurring plaintiffs to file under the current, more plaintiff-friendly framework before the change becomes law.

Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market, is betting big on its business model. Whether that bet pays off depends on how courts resolve a growing conflict between federal commodities regulation and state gambling laws.

Do plaintiffs’ attorneys smell blood in the water? A raft of class-action suits recently initiated against dietary supplement manufacturers, alleging deceptive practices in the sale of fish oil products, suggests that they might.

These suits, filed in California federal courts (a favorite jurisdiction for the plaintiffs’ bar), are nearly identical in that they allege that the manufacturers’ fish oil products do not actually contain fish oil. To date, plaintiffs’ class action lawyers have already targeted well-known dietary supplement products, such as Dr. Tobias ...

Creative and aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers are forever on the hunt for new theories under which to bring potentially lucrative class action lawsuits utilizing plaintiff-friendly state consumer protection statutes (with California being the most favored forum). The dietary supplement industry has been in the plaintiffs bar’s cross-hairs for more than a decade now. As the case law has evolved and developed, supplement companies have had notable success fighting these suits. Just last week, Judge Miller in the Southern District of California tossed a proposed class action ...

On September 6, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California preliminarily approved a settlement in Harvey v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. The significance of the result is two-fold. First, substantively, it is a reminder to financial services firms of potential liability under California labor law when advisors are required to pay for business expenses. Second, procedurally, the court’s approval of the settlement is edifying on the subject of parallel class actions.

In the Harvey case, plaintiffs challenged Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s ...