law-book-271x300.jpgAuthored by:  Noah Finkel, Brett Bartlett, Andrew Paley and Richard Alfred

Members of Seyfarth Shaw’s Wage and Hour Litigation Practice Group have authored Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation, the first-of-its kind treatise on wage and hour litigation. Published by American Lawyer Media’s Law Journal Press, the 912-page volume is the most comprehensive guide published to date that focuses on litigation strategy through all phases of wage and hour lawsuits, the area of high-stakes litigation that, as readers of this blog well know, has plagued employers in recent years.  Indeed, wage and hour lawsuits have outpaced all other types of workplace class actions in recent years, and have surged by more than 325% since the early 2000s.

The book blueprints the mechanics of wage and hour cases, examines how employers in multiple industries are targeted for wage and hour lawsuits, and provides substantive procedural and practical considerations that determine the outcome of such actions in today’s courts.  Principally designed to assist employment litigators and in-house counsel, Seyfarth’s book should also prove useful to senior management seeking to fend off wage-hour actions before they strike.

The guide has already received praise from the Honorable Elaine L. Chao, the 24th U.S. Secretary of Labor, who stated: “Given the recent explosion of wage and hour litigation, both management- and plaintiff-side attorneys will find this publication to be an invaluable reference. With its painstaking attention to the law and procedure, this treatise will certainly be the go-to resource when practitioners ponder questions of strategy and substance in the context of wage and hour cases.”

The book was authored by Noah Finkel, Brett Bartlett and Andrew Paley, who practice in the firm’s Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles offices respectively. Richard Alfred, Boston-based chair of  Seyfarth’s national Wage & Hour Litigation Practice, served as senior editor.  More than 70 other Seyfarth attorneys, many of them regular contributors to this blog, contributed to the book, which will be updated regularly.

Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation takes up 27 chapters and covers the complex rules surrounding all types of wage and hour lawsuits. These include claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act, claims under state wage and hour laws, or hybrid cases involving both, as well as special issues involving government contractors. It advises employers on:  how to respond to a wage and hour complaint; what to consider when deciding whether to remove a case to federal court; how to assess the particular merits of a claim; whether to settle; how to oppose plaintiffs’ motion to facilitate notice for conditional certification; what kinds of affirmative defenses are best; and how to tilt the odds in favor of the defense.

Among topics covered by the book:

  • The certification process and the impact of conditional certification
  • Decertification and its sometimes unexpected consequences
  • Defending against state law wage and hour class actions brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23
  • Discovery issues and strategies in class and collective actions
  • Special considerations under California law, one of the country’s leading venues for wage-hour cases
  • Issues raised by ERISA claims in wage and hour cases
  • Coordinating or consolidating multiple simultaneous class actions
  • Meeting the duty to preserve information, including electronically stored information
  • The pros and cons of arbitration
  • Motions for summary judgment and the optimal time to file
  • Civil remedies, including calculation of unpaid overtime and liquidated damages
  • Actions by the Secretary of Labor to recover unpaid wages and overtime
  • Defending  “independent contractor”  cases
  • Calculating the  “regular rate”  for purposes of the FLSA

Wage & Hour Collective and Class Litigation can be purchased from Law Journal Press by clicking here.  Readers of Seyfarth’s Wage & Hour Litigation blog can use discount code 2128982 at checkout to obtain a special discounted introductory price of $195 for the print & online access bundle or $163 for online access only. The purchase price includes a one-year long subscription to all updates.