Fex Ex agress to pay $27 million to California drivers. Are Connecticut drivers next?

Federal Express has agreed to pay approximately $27,000,000 to 200 drivers in California.  Employment Law 360 reports that this settlement of a lawsuit started approximately 10 years ago, could set the stage for similar settlements in states accross the country, including Connecticut.  These suits allege that the drivers should have been classified as employees but instead were illegally classified as independent contractors.  The average driver will get approximately $70,000, says Lynn Rossman Faris, counsel for the plaintiffs.  In Connecticut, a similar class of Fed Ex drivers is being represented in a case filed in May 2007.  Those plaintiffs are being represented by Shannon Liss-Riordan of Pyle, Rome, Lichten, Ehrenberg and Liss-Riordan, from Massachusetts and by Richard Hayber of the Hayber Law Firm, LLC and Anthony Pantuso of the Pantuso Law Firm, LLC, both of Connecticut.  Congratulations to the California drivers and good luck to our local Connecticut drivers and their attorneys.

Class actions well suited to help enforce employee rights

Despite recent decisions by Connecticut’s trial judges, class actions are a widely accepted method of enforcing the rights of employees and discouraging employers from violating employment laws.  A few years ago, a handful of Connecticut trial judges denied class certification to several groups of employees attempting to enforce their rights under Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Act.  The general holdings were that class actions were not appropriate since it was likely that employees would have to provide individualized testimony in support of their own claims.  Dan Schwartz’ Connecticut Employment Law Blog has written about these cases.  

Connecticuts federal courts had previously allowed class action status under the Connecticut Minimum Wage Act, but our Superior Court judges strictly applied a holding from an unrelated case involving doctors suing Anthem Blue Cross and created a body of law destined to inhibit the protection of employee rights in Connecticut.  In September, our the Supreme Court of our sister state, Massachusetts, got it right.  In Salvas v. Wal-Mart, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reversed a trial court ruling and directed that court to certify a class of over 67,000 employees at 47 different Wal-Mart stores in Massachusetts.  That court had no difficulty holding that class wide issues would predominate over individual ones, despite the fact that the class was comprised of several different job titles and descriptions.  Congratulations to Shannon Liss-Riordan on her important victory.  

The point of course is that class actions are an important tool for plaintiffs’ employment lawyers to enforce employee rights.  Most courts permit these lawsuits, including the courts of Massachusetts.  Connecticut’s courts, thus far, have lagged behind.