Adriana S. Kosovych, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, was quoted in Bloomberg Law’s Daily Labor Report in “Worker Bargained Away Fourth Cir. Appeal Rights in Wage Case,” by Robert Iafolla. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
A worker lost the ability to revive a defunct group lawsuit alleging an auto parts manufacturer violated wage-and-hour law because he settled his individual claims with the company, according to a federal appeals court.
Former GKN Driveline North America Inc. employee James Mebane made a deal with the company before he contested a district court’s decision to decertify a conditional Fair Labor Standards Act collective and state law classes, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said in its ruling Tuesday.
“That means Mebane lacks standing to appeal the district court’s decertification order,” Judge Allison Jones Rushing, a Trump appointee, wrote for the court.
The decision clarifies that plaintiffs in the Fourth Circuit lose standing to appeal adverse certification rulings related to FLSA collectives if they voluntarily resolve their individual claims. The circuit had already reached that conclusion with respect to classes in its 2011 decision in Rhodes v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. …
“This case illustrates what happens when lawyers get dollar signs in their eyes,” GKN’s attorney, Adriana Kosovych of Epstein Becker & Green PC, said in a statement. “This case would have been fine as a two-person wage claim, but it was always inappropriate as a collective or class action spanning several thousand workers.”
