Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2025

was premature. Vanegas v. Signet Builders, Inc. , 46 F. 4th 636, 645 (7th Cir. 2022). The Seventh Circuit ruled that § 213(b)(12) is an affirmative defense, and Vanegas’ complaint did not contain enough facts about the agricultural nature of the work to warrant dismissal. Signet then filed a petition for writ of certiorari and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the issue, which the Supreme Court declined to do. Signet Builders, Inc. v. Luna Vanegas , 144 S. Ct. 71 (2023). With the case back at the district court, Vanegas filed a motion for conditional certification. Even though Signet was incorporated and headquartered in Texas, the district court held that it was fair for this notice to go out to employees across the nation, because otherwise the ruling would have “the practical effect of forcing plaintiffs to file any multi-state FLSA collective action in the defendant employer’s home forum.” Id. at *3. Signet then filed a motion for interlocutory appeal, bringing the case back to the Seventh Circuit for a second time. Id. at *4. The district court granted that request. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit reversed the district court for the second time, but this time on personal jurisdiction grounds. The Seventh Circuit explained that generally a plaintiff can only sue a corporate defendant in three places. First, a corporation can be sued in its state of incorporation. Second, a corporation can be sued in the state where its headquarters is located. And third, a corporation can be sued in any state where the issues connected with that case occurred. In this instance, it was undisputed that Signet was incorporated and headquartered in Texas. It was also undisputed that only Vanegas’ claims (and not the claims of other employees) arose out of Signet’s conduct in Wisconsin. Therefore, the question was whether Signet’s conduct in Wisconsin was sufficient to justify a nationwide case. The Seventh Circuit held that it was not. Relying heavily on Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. , the Seventh Circuit held that Signet must be subject to personal jurisdiction in Wisconsin — for each one of the would-be opt-in plaintiffs’ claims — for the case to go forward on a nationwide basis. This rule differs from the standard in Rule 23 class actions because there, a representative plaintiff can maintain a lawsuit in a foreign jurisdiction if the court has jurisdiction over the named plaintiff. The Seventh Circuit, however, reasoned that because a collective action plaintiff is not a party until they “opt in” to the litigation, FLSA collective actions are truly just “agglomerations of individual claims,” as opposed to one singular lawsuit. Vanegas, 2024 WL 3841024, at *4. Further, unlike Rule 23 class actions, each party is entitled to proceed individually and “the statute of limitations on opt-in plaintiffs’ claims enjoys tolling only after the plaintiff files her consent, which goes to show the focus on a plaintiff’s own management of her claim.” Id. Consequently, the Seventh Circuit set a different standard to find personal jurisdiction in FLSA collective actions than the standard for Rule 23 class actions. Additionally, the Seventh Circuit dispensed with a highly technical argument regarding Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 4 and 5 — holding that it did not save Vanegas’ nationwide lawsuit. Vanegas argued that once personal jurisdiction was established over his claims against Signet in Wisconsin, and service was validly executed pursuant to Rule 4, then he was free to add parties via service under Rule 5. However, the Seventh Circuit succinctly and unequivocally rejected that argument and held: “That is not how it works.” Id. at *7 (emphasis added). The Seventh Circuit explained that the Rule 5 workaround only applies if the court already has personal jurisdiction over the defendant as to the opt-in plaintiffs’ claims. Otherwise, a new summons needs to be brought in a venue where the opt-in plaintiff can establish personal jurisdiction over the company. In a fairly unique wage & hour lawsuit, a group of pro se plaintiffs in Fenner, et al. v. Baltimore Police Department , Case No. 24-CV-2714 (D. Md. Oct. 18, 2024), filed a collective action against the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore and the Baltimore Police Department, alleging that when the city transitioned to Workday, a payroll management service, numerous problems led to erroneous, late, and missed payroll payments which violated the FLSA. The plaintiffs filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, and the court denied the motion. The court explained that “while an individual may litigate his own claims, the right to represent oneself does not create a concomitant right to litigate on behalf of others.” Id. at 1. The court reasoned that, therefore, a pro se plaintiff may not file a collective action lawsuit without counsel. The court stated that since none of the plaintiffs contended that they were represented by counsel, none of them were able to represent anyone other than him or herself. For these reasons, the court denied the motion for conditional certification. Personal jurisdiction arguments based on Bristol-Meyers also substantially limited an FLSA collective action in Kimble, et al. v. Opteon Appraisal, Inc ., 712 F. Supp. 3d 379, 382 (W.D.N.Y. 2024). The defendant, Opteon Appraisal, was headquartered in Arizona but incorporated in Delaware, and the plaintiff brought an FLSA collective action claim against Opteon in federal court in the Western District of New York, alleging that Staff Appraisers were routinely given many appraisals which necessitated overtime, which they were not paid in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff sought to compel the contact information of the members of the putative collective action to facilitate notice, and defendant argued that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over the opt-in

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