Labor and Employment Class Actions
- Holland & Knight's labor and employment law attorneys have extensive experience handling a wide variety of claims, including litigating class certification and collective action certification, conducting class and merits discovery, litigating the merits in large class action cases, and negotiating and guiding court approval of settlements.
- Our team has obtained dismissals of claims and class and collective action allegations without any discovery, opposed class certification and collective action certification after discovery, obtained summary judgments and settled cases economically and quickly when appropriate.
- Determining the client’s business objectives and then crafting a strategy to meet those objectives is our approach and we also counsel clients on how to prevent class actions in such areas as wage-hour and discrimination in pay, hiring and promotions.
Overview
Holland & Knight has extensive experience defending against class actions and collective actions that are “must-win” cases for our clients due to claims for enormous money damages and requests for injunctions and other findings that threaten core business operations, cause harm to customer relations and reputation and, in some cases, threaten the viability of the company.
Hands-On Experience Working for You
Our experience includes litigating class certification and collective action certification itself, conducting class and merits discovery, litigating the merits in large class/collective action cases, negotiating settlements and guiding them through the court approval and notice process and handling appeals involving class certification and related issues. We have handled cases throughout the United States involving a wide variety of claims, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and its state counterparts, Title VII, ADEA, ADA and state FEP statutes, public accessibility under ADA Title III and various state statutory and state common law claims.
Our labor and employment law attorneys have obtained dismissals of claims and dismissals of class/collective action allegations without any discovery in a number of cases. We also have opposed class/collective action certification after class discovery in other cases, have obtained summary judgments in still other cases and have settled cases economically and quickly where that was our client’s goal. In some cases, we have even filed class actions against classes of employees, so we understand how plaintiffs’ class action lawyers operate.
Prevention
We work with clients to provide vulnerability assessments and programs to change employment practices to prevent or reduce vulnerability to class/collective actions in areas such as wage-hour and discrimination in pay, hiring and promotions.
Litigation
Our approach is to determine the client’s business objectives and then craft a strategy with our client to meet those objectives. When litigation is unavoidable, we have lawyers in our offices throughout the country who focus their practice on class actions.
