The Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC—authored by Judge Posner—is full of good news for employers and other class-action defendants.
The case is a hybrid collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act (pdf) and opt-out Rule 23(b)(3) class action asserting state-law wage-and-hour claims. The plaintiffs—a group of home satellite-dish installers who were paid by the job rather than by the hour—sued their employer for allegedly failing to ensure that they were paid the federal minimum wage and time-and-a-half for overtime work. The district court initially certified the collective and class actions, but decertified
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit: A “Shapeless, Free-Wheeling” Trial Plan Is Grounds for Decertifying Class