What are the fast rising types of lawsuits?
I helped give a webinar the other day for Blogging4Jobs. Attorney Casey Sipe and I talked about the coming changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act. There are going to be pretty big changes that will lead to many companies re-evaluating their current FLSA procedures. They may not be happy with what they find. And that is you clue to the answer to the question in the title.
The answer
I made a statement similar to this, which comes from attorneys Kate Bischoff and Judith Langevin of Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason LLP. They said:
“…private FLSA claims have surpassed Title VII claims to become the most frequently filed employment cases in federal court. Plaintiffs’ employment lawyers like wage and hour cases, and like them best when they can make claims on behalf of a number of people.”
Wage and hour cases are expensive because of back pay of up to three years, awards of attorney’s fees for the plaintiff’s attorneys and your defense fees. In these cases you are either right or wrong and in my experience employers are generally wrong.
The FLSA regulations
With the impending FLSA regulatory changes that are coming you have the opportunity to clean up. I would suggest you take the opportunity to correct misclassifications and incorrect payment methods.
Just saying…