By Happy Holiday season to our loyal readers of the Workplace Class Action Blog!
Our elves are busy at work this holiday season in wrapping up the galley proofs of our start-of-the-year kick-off publication – Seyfarth Shaw’s Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report.
We anticipate going to press in the first two weeks of January, and launching the 2013 Report to our readers from our Blog.
This will be our Ninth Annual Report, and the biggest yet with analysis of over 1,000 class certification rulings from federal and state courts in 2012.
The has been a year of seismic changes for employment-related class action litigation. The landscape of class action litigation was fundamentally reshaped last year as the result of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011). Both SCOTUS rulings have had a profound “halo effect” in 2012 as the plaintiffs’ bar and employers litigated Rule 23 issues in the wake of Wal-Mart and Concepcion. To be sure, Rule 23 case law is in flux, and our reading of the tea leaves suggests that 2013 will be another year of evolving case law developments impacting our readers and their companies.
The “tipping point” aspects of these changes will be featured in the 2013 edition of the Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report. The Report is the sole compendium in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to workplace class action litigation, and has become the “go to” research and resource guide for businesses and their corporate counsel facing complex litigation. It analyzes rulings from all state and federal courts – including private plaintiff class actions and collective actions, and government enforcement actions – in the substantive areas of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. It 
also features chapters on EEOC pattern or practice rulings, state law class certification decisions, and non-workplace class action rulings that impact employers. The Report also analyzes the leading class action settlements for 2012 for employment discrimination, wage & hour, and ERISA class actions, as well as settlements of government enforcement actions, both with respect to monetary values and injunctive relief provisions.
Information on ordering your copy of the 2013 Report will be available on our blog in early January. Happy holidays!