The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes continues to agitate the employment practices litigation arena while at the same time both EEOC enforcement activity and wage and hour litigation continue to surge, according to the annual review of workplace litigation by the Seyfarth Shaw law firm. The law firm’s January 14, 2013 press release about this year’s ninth edition of the annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report can be found here. The report’s introductory “trends” chapter and the “top ten” settlements chapter can be found here.

 

Among the many changes that the Wal-Mart case has brought about during the past year is that it resulted in a decline in the levels and numbers of employment discrimination class action settlements in 2012. According to the report, the 2012 total for all employment discrimination class action settlements was about $49 million, which is well below the $348 million level in 2010, the year before the Wal-Mart decision, and the lowest annual level since 2006. (As discussed n greater detail here, in its June 2011 decision in the Wal-Mart case, the Supreme Court established a heighted standard to satisfy the “commonality” required in order to certify a class.)

 

This decline in aggregate settlements is due to the fact that employers settled many fewer employment discrimination cases during 2012, fewer than “at any time over the past decade and at a fraction of levels as in the period from 2006 to 2011.” The decline reflects the difficulty in the wake of Wal-Mart in certifying a nationwide class, as well as the ability of the defendants “to dismantle large class cases or to devalue them for settlement purposes.” Indeed, according to the study, the Wal-Mart case has “caused both federal and state courts to conduct a wholesale review of the propriety of previous class certification orders in pending cases.”

 

At the same time, though, governmental enforcement activity remained at “white hot” levels in 2012. According to the report, more discrimination charges were filed with the EEOC in 2012 than in all but one previous year since the Commission was founded. The Commission is particularly focused on its “systemic investigation program” in which the agency is emphasizing the “identification, investigation and litigation of discrimination claims affecting large groups of ‘alleged victims.’” According to the study, the agency is focused on “high-impact, high-stakes litigation.”

 

In particular, the EEOC’s prosecution of “pattern or practice lawsuits” is “an agency-wide priority.” The Commission completed work on 240 systemic investigations in fiscal year 2012, resulting in 94 ‘probable cause’ determinations and 46 settlement agreements or conciliation agreements that yielded a total recovery of $36.2 million for systemic claims.

 

And while workplace litigation overall has remained level with prior years, wage and hour related litigation “continued to out-pace all other types of work place class actions.”   Thus, while ERISA litigation was down slightly for the year (from 8,414 cases in 2011 to 7,908 in 2012, a decline of about 6%) and employment discrimination filings were also down (from 14,411 in 2011 to 14,260 in 2012, a decline of 1%), there were 7,908 FLSA lawsuit filings in 2012, representing about a 16% increase from the 6,779 filings in 2011. In addition, state court wage and hour class action lawsuit filings also surged in 2012. The report projects that “the vigorous pursuit of nationwide FLSA collective actions by the plaintiffs’ bar will continue in 2013.”

 

While the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wal-Mart decision, as well as its 2011 ruling in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (recognizing the enforceability of contractual arbitration agreements), have unquestionably had an impact on the workplace litigation arena, the plaintiffs class action bar has moved quickly to respond. According to the report, 2012 saw “rapid strategic changes based on evolving decisions and developments.” The plaintiffs’ bar “began the process of ‘re-booting’ class–wide theories of certification, as well as establishing liability and damages on a class-wide basis.”

 

As a result, “workplace class action litigation case law is in flux, and more change is inevitable in 2013.” Among other things, the report suggests that as a result of these changes, “future employment discrimination class action filings are likely to increase due to a strategy whereby state or regional-type classes are asserted rather than nationwide, mega-cases.”

 

A January 14, 2013 Corporate Counsel article about the Seyfarth Shaw report can be found here. Special thanks to Gerald Maatman, the report’s co-author and chair of the Seyfarth Shaw class action litigation group, for providing me with a copy of the report and press release. Maatman’s January 14, 2013 post on the Workplace Class Action Blog about the report can be found here.