Ninth Circuit Affirms Class Cert Grant to Claims Adjusters
Posted in Employee Rights, Employment Law, News, Wage and Hour on September 4, 2014
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit gave plaintiffs an important victory in off-the-clock overtime cases when it affirmed the district court’s grant of class certification to a class of auto, property, liability, casualty, and special investigations claims adjusters in Jimenez v. Allstate . The Court first rejected Allstate’s argument that the common questions identified by the district court {(i) whether class members generally worked overtime without receiving compensation as a result of the defendant’s unofficial policy of discouraging reporting of such overtime, the defendant’s failure to reduce class members’ workload after reclassification to non-exempt status, and the defendant’s policy of treating pay as salaries with overtime as an “exception”; (ii) whether the defendant knew or should have known that class members did so; and (iii) whether the defendant stood idly by without compensating class members for such overtime} would not resolve classwide liability issues. Because the three common questions identified by the district court “will drive the answer to the plaintiffs’ claims on one of the three elements of their [off the clock] claim,” they are “precisely the kind of common questions that Rule 23(a)(2) and Dukes require.” That is, because the resolution of these common questions will tend to show whether the defendant was liable under one of the three prongs of an off the clock claim (in which liability is established by proving (1) the plaintiff performed work for which he did not receive compensation and (2) the defendants knew or should have known that he did so, but (3) stood idly by), they will “drive the resolution of the litigation,” as Dukes and its subsequent case law require.
The Jimenez decision also provides helpful guidance on the use of statistical sampling and representative testimony in employment, and particularly wage and hour, cases. Indeed, the Court makes clear that “statistical sampling and representative testimony are acceptable ways to determine liability” and “[s]o long as the plaintiffs were harmed by the same conduct, disparities in how or by how much they were harmed [do] not defeat class certification.” Plaintiffs’ attorneys should pay close attention to the Court’s affirmation of the district court’s trial plan, which (1) bifurcated the liability and damages phases and (2) allowed statistical analysis in the liability stage, but (3) rejected the use of representative testimony and sampling at the damages phase, preserving the defendant’s ability to raise any individualized defenses at that time.
Finally, the decision suggests that insurance claims examiners and claims representatives at insurance companies like Allstate operating under a de facto policy requiring off-the-clock work have a path to bringing their claims on a class basis, and that there is nothing inherent in the nature of forced underreporting claims that precludes class treatment.
