On June 15, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas denied in part a motion to dismiss by Fringe Benefit Group and its subsidiaries, Plan Benefit Services, Inc. and Fringe Insurance Benefits, Inc.

On May 14, 2018, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California denied a motion to compel arbitration of class members’ claims by defendants ABM Industries, Inc., et al., instead revising the class definitions to exclude claims by some Cleaners beginning in 2016, when three collective bargaining agreements containing arbitration clauses became effective.

On May 9, 2018, Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow LLP and co-counsel Block & Leviton LLP filed a complaint on behalf of 2,000 participants in the Adams and Associates, Inc. Employee Stock Ownership Plan.

On April 12, 2018, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York granted preliminary approval of a $1.4 million class action settlement on behalf of the participants and beneficiaries of the Atrium Management Services, Inc. Employee Stock Ownership Plan (“Atrium ESOP”).

On March 20, 2018, Plaintiffs Manley Gough, Curtis Bryant and John Gouveia filed a motion in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California seeking preliminary approval of a $1.75 million class action settlement on behalf of the participants and beneficiaries of the Tennyson Electric, Inc.

On January 26, 2018, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California certified three classes of janitorial workers employed by defendants ABM Industries, Inc.

On December 20, 2017, a Connecticut jury found IT service provider CSC violated state and federal law by failing to pay certain system administrators overtime. Press coverage of the verdict is collected below.

Jury concludes IT firm knowingly denied workers overtime pay
Washington Post
December 21, 2017
Quotation from Todd Jackson:

“What this ruling tells companies is if they decide to fight these lawsuits, they can lose them in front of a jury,” said Todd Jackson, an attorney at the law firm Feinberg Jackson Worthman and Wasow, who helped bring the class-action suit against the company. “Every technology company should wake up this morning and say ‘do we have a group of workers who are misclassified and should have been paid overtime all along?’ ”

Jury Finds IT Co. Misclassified Workers As OT Exempt
Law360 (subscription only)
December 21, 2017
Quotation from Todd Jackson:

Meanwhile, Todd Jackson of Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow LLP, co-lead counsel for the employees, said in a statement that “these system administrators’ hard work for CSC and its clients is a significant driver of CSC’s profits and success, and they deserve to be fairly compensated.”

Jury finds CSC ‘wilfully’ underpaid tech support workers
ZDNet
December 22, 2017
Quotation from Todd Jackson:

“These system administrators’ hard work for CSC and its clients is a significant driver of CSC’s profits and success, and they deserve to be fairly compensated,” said co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel Todd Jackson of Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow LLP.

Federal Jury Rules Against DXC; Lawsuit Demanding Overtime Pay Could Force Changes In How IT Workers Are Classified And Paid
CRN
December 21, 2017
Quotation from Todd Jackson:

“Technology companies across the country should be waking up this morning and looking to see if they have large groups of workers that need to be reclassified,” Todd Jackson, an attorney with Feinberg Jackson, said in a statement. “Companies are learning that they can’t willfully underpay thousands of workers and hope to get away with it.”

Plaintiffs Notch Trial Win in Overtime Wage Fight Against IT Provider
Connecticut Law Tribune
December 21, 2017
Quotation from Todd Jackson:

Attorneys for the plaintiff class said in a written statement that their clients deserve to be adequately compensated. “These system administrators’ hard work for CSC and its clients is a significant driver of CSC’s profits and success, and they deserve to be fairly compensated,” said Todd Jackson, of Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow, in a press release Thursday.

On December 20, 2017, following a two-week trial in front of the Honorable Janet Bond Arterton of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, a jury found that Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), a provider of information technology (IT) services to large corporations and government agencies, misclassified over 1000 Associate Professional and Professional System Administrators as exempt from overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, California law, and Connecticut law, and as a result only paid them a flat salary regardless of how many hours they worked. The jury’s verdict in the case, Joseph Strauch et al. v. Computer Sciences Corporation, No. 3:14-cv-956 (JBA) (D. Conn.), means that CSC now has to compensate these System Administrators for their unpaid overtime. Todd Jackson and Genevieve Casey of Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow LLP represented the class of System Administrators at trial alongside co-counsel from Outten & Golden and Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP. Now the case proceeds to a damages phase, where the court will determine how much CSC owes each class member. For more information on the lawsuit, please visit https://www.csclawsuit.com/.

On October 18, 2017, the Honorable Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California remanded to Alameda County Superior Court the matter of Jimenez Perea v. Dooley, in which Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow LLP, along with co-counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), represents numerous Medi-Cal participants and advocacy organizations, including the Community Division of the Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), alleging that Medi-Cal violates the civil rights of its mostly Latino participants by effectively denying them access to Medi-Cal’s full benefits. The complaint, available here, documents how Medi-Cal’s low reimbursement rates for doctors, various administrative burdens for doctors and patients in the program, and the State’s failure to adequately monitor access to Medi-Cal result in civil rights violations. Medi-Cal’s access problems have worsened as the State has disinvested from the program at the same time as it has come to serve more and more Latino participants. These problems hurt everyone on Medi-Cal.

After Plaintiffs filed their complaint in state court, Defendants removed it to federal court under the argument that the case concerned a “federal question.” In remanding the case to state court, Judge Gonzalez Rogers found, among other findings, that “California has principal authority for setting reimbursement rates” and thus “no federal question need be resolved to determine whether plaintiffs here are entitled to relief under state law.” Accordingly, she sent the case back to state court, where Plaintiffs originally filed their complaint. The case will now move forward in state court, where Plaintiffs look forward to making their case. A copy of her order is available here.

More information about the filing of the complaint is available here and here. For additional information, please contact Catha Worthman or Darin Ranahan.

On July 6, 2017, the firm filed Chavez v. Plan Benefit Services, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, along with co-counsel Altshuler Berzon and Bruckner Burch.