Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2025

certification orders by the court which did not limit the scope of notice or require evidence to have a minimum threshold of geographic representation at the conditional certification stage. Id. at *15. The court rejected this argument. It held that the plaintiffs failed “to identify any authority where a nationwide [collective action] was certified on a similar record to the one currently before the Court . . . [A]lleging mere misclassification is not sufficient for collective [action] certification, even at this stage.” Id. Accordingly, the court held that while Plaintiffs’ evidence regarding AGMs in North Carolina warranted that conditional certification was appropriate within the State, the plaintiffs did not establish that conditional certification was appropriate on a nationwide basis. Another approach is to seek to limit a collective action to positions that the declarants held during their time at their employer, which proved successful in Sanchez, et al. v. Clipper Realty, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111289 (S.D.N.Y. June 25, 2024). There, the plaintiff, a porter, filed a collective action alleging that the defendant systemically underreported hours worked by time-shaving, and thereby failed to pay overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. The plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, and the court granted the motion in part. The plaintiff contended that all non-exempt employees across various roles within the defendants’ properties were subject to the alleged unlawful time-shaving policy. The plaintiff specifically asserted that he also was regularly not paid for training hours, worked through unpaid lunch breaks, and was instructed to underreport hours on sign-in sheets before clock-in machines were implemented. Even after the machines were installed, the plaintiff alleged he was required to perform unpaid tasks before clocking in and was often clocked out during necessary meetings. The plaintiff sought to include all non-exempt employees - including construction workers, porters, and concierges - who worked for the defendants since October 15, 2015, in the collective action. The defendants argued that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that there was common policy violating the FLSA and that the proposed collective action was overly broad. In support of the motion, the plaintiff offered his own affidavit, along with declarations from co-workers, which asserted that the defendants engaged in time-shaving practices, where employees were not compensated for all hours worked. Although the court determined that the plaintiff met the requisite burden required to establish that he was similarly-situated to other employees for purposes of conditional certification, the court determined that the proposed collective action was too expansive. The court therefore limited the certified group to specific positions — consisting of porters, handymen, concierges, and repairmen — who worked at only three designated locations, including Clover House, 50 Murray Street, and 53 Park Place. Accordingly, the court granted in part the plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification of a collective action. 4. Rulings Denying Conditional Certification Based On Procedural Or Technical Arguments Defendants in 2024 continued the trend from the last few years of utilizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. , 582 U.S. 255 (2017) - which it held that California courts lacked specific jurisdiction over non-resident plaintiffs’ claims in a “mass action” brought under California law - to defeat attempts to proceed with nationwide collective actions based on personal jurisdiction grounds. Decisions in 2024 also demonstrate that arbitration agreements can be used to defeat or substantially limit conditional certification as well. In a significant development, in Vanegas, et al. v. Signet Builders, Inc., 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 20780 (7th Cir. Aug. 16, 2024), the Seventh Circuit joined several other circuits in holding that personal jurisdiction was a procedural prerequisite for a court to exercise jurisdiction over opt-in plaintiffs’ FLSA claims. The defendant, Signet Builders, Inc. (Signet), is both incorporated and headquartered in Texas, but its business spans across the nation. As part of its business, Signet employs a small subsect of its employees in Wisconsin who are primarily tasked with building livestock houses. The plaintiff Jose Ageo Luna Vanegas was one of those workers. In 2021, he filed a collective action against Signet claiming that he was not paid overtime in violation of the FLSA. Vanegas, however, did not bring his claims on an individual-plaintiff basis, but rather sought to litigate his FLSA claims on a nationwide collective action basis to magnify the scope of the litigation. After Vanegas filed his lawsuit, a complicated legal battle unfolded. Signet filed a motion to dismiss and argued that “Vanegas’s work fell within a provision of the FLSA that exempts agricultural workers from its overtime requirements.” Vanegas v. Signet Builders, Inc. , 554 F. Supp. 3d 987, 989-90 (W.D. Wis. 2021) (citing 29 U.S.C. § 213(b)(12)). The district court held that Vanegas “performed his work on farms, and the work he performed — constructing livestock containment structures — was incidental to farming,” and therefore dismissed his case. Id. at 993. Vanegas appealed that dismissal to the Seventh Circuit. It reversed the district court — holding that dismissal

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