Wage & Hour Declaration in Collective Action Certification Case

Defense counsel Seyfarth Shaw engaged Mike DuMond, PhD, to prepare a declaration on behalf of in a wage-and-hour case brought in federal court in Florida.

Plaintiffs’ counsel argued that the client’s policies resulted in mandatory off-the-clock work and, in combination with other company policies, violated sections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In his declaration, Dr. DuMond identified differences among the opt-in plaintiffs and analyzed the validity of the plaintiffs’ trial plan, with specific attention to the requisite sample sizes that would be necessary to reliably calculate monetary damages for the proposed collective.

In a ruling denying conditional collective action certification, the court found that the individualized analyses necessary to analyze the potential off-the-clock work claims of the plaintiffs could not be grouped into a single collective action suit. The client thanked Dr. DuMond for the statistical work in his declaration, which:

“[…] explain[ed] why a collective determination of the plaintiffs’ distinctive claims would [not] make sense.”

Learn more about BRG’s Labor & Employment practice.