HR Management & Compliance

Wage/Hour Litigation = Easy Money for Lawyers

Wage-and-hour rules have been around for nearly three-quarters of a century—ever since FDR’s New Deal—so it’s hard to picture them triggering the next wave of employment litigation, but attorney Marc Jacuzzi, Esq. thinks otherwise.

 

Litigation Tsunami?

 

“Plaintiffs’ lawyers are leaving the ugly world of discrimination and going to wage-and-hour litigation because it is easy,” says Jacuzzi, of Simpson, Garrity, Innes and Jacuzzi, PC, in South San Francisco.

 

Jacuzzi says that discrimination lawsuits are “ugly” in lawyers’ eyes because they require hard work, and high-money verdicts are hard to come by. The risk/reward equation is not always attractive to lawyers.

 

Faster Payback

 

Wage-and-hour cases, on the other hand, can yield a faster payback with less work. Jacuzzi described how a law firm in San Jose is advertising on BART, the San Francisco-area public transit network. Its ubiquitous posters ask, “Have you missed a meal or rest break?” The ads appear to be targeted at the Latino community. Members of the firm are also posting their business cards on church bulletin boards.

 


Check out ERI’s wage/hour HR Management & Compliance Report, exclusively for California employers, and find out how to avoid getting burned in a complicated—and costly—wage/hour suit. Read more.


 

“They have a running caseload of 60 cases each,” Jacuzzi said. “And they are looking to get $10,000-$15,000 in attorney’s fees out of each case.” The lawyers’ tactic is to find employers that have violated wage-and-hour law in the way that Starbucks was recently found guilty of doing. (Managers at Starbucks were doubling as baristas. Because they were spending more than half their time serving customers, they were considered nonexempt under California law and entitled to overtime pay.)

 

Through large-scale advertising, the lawyers sign up large numbers of employees, and employers get stuck with big settlements for violations.


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In Jacuzzi’s view, this could be a serious problem for employers as other law firms try to hop aboard this new gravy train. He notes that in 2008, more than 1,200 wage-and-hour cases were filed in the Southern District of Florida.

 

Tune in tomorrow for more of Jacuzzi’s insights on this issue, and some information about a resource created specifically for California employers that can help keep you out of court—and the headlines.

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