By: Russell Keener  —  September 20, 2011
 

Wage and hour law­suits have been steadily ris­ing over the last few years, and the trend con­tin­ues.  In recent years, Wal­mart, Star­bucks, FedEx and Domino’s Pizza are just a few of the well-known names whose com­pa­nies have had class action law­suits filed against them.

Here are the results of a study of 187 Wage & Hour set­tle­ments con­ducted by NERA Eco­nomic Con­sult­ing, demon­strat­ing the trends in wage and hour set­tle­ments over the last 4 to 5 years:

The value of set­tle­ments is decreas­ing, while the num­ber of set­tle­ments increased over the time period rang­ing from 2007 to 2010.  In 2007 and 2008, the aver­age set­tle­ment value was over $20 mil­lion.  In 2010 this num­ber decreased to $7.6 million.

The median per-plaintiff set­tle­ment over this time period was $3,500, with the mean per-plaintiff set­tle­ment being approx­i­mately $5,700.  It appears that as the size of the class goes up, the amount per plain­tiff decreases.

The key fac­tors in dri­ving set­tle­ment value are the dura­tion of the alleged class period and the size of the poten­tial class.  Other fac­tors that affect set­tle­ment value include the juris­dic­tion involved and type and num­ber of alle­ga­tions made.

It is dif­fi­cult to know if the data in the report is reli­able; it is pos­si­bly skewed a bit as set­tle­ments reached in Cal­i­for­nia accounted for more than 40% of the total resolved cases.  Cal­i­for­nia is a state where wage and hour law­suits are extremely com­mon due to vig­or­ous state laws.

While this report obvi­ously doesn’t cover all of the sta­tis­tics and relied heav­ily on set­tle­ments reported in the media, there are thou­sands of smaller set­tle­ments that are not made public.  Wage and hour law­suits often mean big cost for com­pa­nies, big money for employees.

If you or some­one you know may be enti­tled to a Wage & Hour (over­time) claim, call The Keener Law Firm today for a free con­fi­den­tial con­sul­ta­tion.  770–955-3000