2012CAR_small.jpgBy Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Laura Maechtlen

We are often asked – “How do you do it – how do you produce the Annual Workplace Class Action Report”?

The answer is pretty simple – “we live, eat, and breathe workplace class action law 24/7.”

Each morning we check the previous day’s filings of EEOC lawsuits and workplace class actions relative to employment discrimination, ERISA, and wage & hour claims. We do so on a national basis. Then we check every ruling on Rule 23 certification and subsidiary issues throughout federal and state trial and appellate courts. This is also done on a national basis. We put this information in our customized database; we analyze and compare the rulings on class action issues and Rule 23 topics; and then we prepare an analysis of each decision.

Our class action practitioners – a group of over 100 Seyfarth lawyers – contribute to the process of building the database and analyzing decisional law on a daily basis.

We have being doing this on a 24/7 basis for 8 years, and publishing the Annual Workplace Class Action Report in the first week of January of each calendar year.

The result is a compendium of workplace class action law that is unique in its analysis, scope, and comprehensiveness.

We were particularly proud this week when Employment Practices Liability Consultant (“EPLiC”) recognized our Report as the “state-of-the-art word” on workplace class action litigation. In its article entitled “Seyfarth Shaw’s Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: The State-of-the Art Word on Employment-Related Class Actions,” EPLiC summed it up as follows – “The Report stands alone as the definitive source of information on employment class action litigation” and “no practitioner who deals with employment claims . . . should be without it.”

Thanks EPLiC. We sincerely appreciate the kudos.

By way of a progress report, we are now 5 months into the year, and we have tracked and analyzed more class action decisions to this point in 2012 than in past years. As we predicted in our last Report, the impact of changing Rule 23 standards based on Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011), continues to fuel robust case law developments. On this pace, our 2013 Report will cover more decisions than ever before.