Justia Labor & Employment Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff appealed from a judgment entered by the district court granting an oral motion of defendants, plaintiff's former employer, for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 with respect to plaintiff's claims arising under section 4312(a) of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act ("USERRA"), 38 U.S.C. 4301 et seq, where plaintiff was eventually terminated by defendants after returning to work upon completion of his call to active duty by the Army. At issue was whether the district court erred in granting the motion where plaintiff claimed that defendants discriminated against him on account of his military service. The court affirmed the judgment and held that there was no reasonable basis to find a violation of section 4312(a) where plaintiff was rehired with the same title, salary, and other conditions of employment after his immediate return from military service.

In June 2009, defendant filed an arbitration demand against plaintiff alleging claims for wrongful termination and breach of contract based on plaintiff's failure to pay a performance bonus. Defendant subsequently filed a new demand for arbitration in October 2010, which included his original claims plus claims of fraud and breach of contract, after the arbitrator denied his motion to amend the original arbitration demand when he discovered evidence suggesting that plaintiff had padded estimated revenues for defendant's companies by $17 million. Plaintiff argued on appeal that the district court erred by not granting its motion for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order; that defendant's withdrawal from the first arbitration waived his right to a second arbitration; and that the first arbitration's October Order, denying defendant leave to amend, was an enforceable arbitration award. The court held that the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. 16(b)(4), precluded the court's review of the district court's order refusing to enjoin the arbitration. The court also held that a final decision with respect to an arbitration required an official dismissal of all claims and thus, where the district court stayed proceedings in lieu of dismissal, the decision was not final. The court further concluded that an arbitration award was a final adjudication of a claim on the merits and a procedural ruling that denied leave to amend was not an award since the decision had no effect on the merits of the proposed claims. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

This dispute arose from the district court's decision to award an attorney $515,179.28 in attorney's fees pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act's fee shifting provision, 29 U.S.C. 216(b), for work performed in successfully litigating a case against the City of New York ("city"). The attorney did not keep contemporaneous records and the city appealed the award, arguing that it violated the New York State Ass'n for Retarded Children, Inc. v Carey rule, which explicitly required that such records be kept. The court held that, because a district court's "personal observation" of an attorney's work was not by itself a sufficient basis for permitting a deviation and awarding fees in the absence of contemporaneous records, the most recent order of the district court reinstating its original award of attorney's fees was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings.

Plaintiff, a labor organization that represented a bargaining unit of defendant's employees, filed a formal grievance with defendant, challenging defendant's discontinuation of dues "checkoff," or deduction of dues from employees' paychecks, and seeking collection and remittance of all back dues with interest. At issue was whether the district court erred in concluding that the parties' dispute over checkoff of union dues was subject to arbitration pursuant to their expired collective-bargaining agreement. The court held that plaintiff's contractual right to checkoff of union dues survived expiration of the agreement and therefore, subjected the parties' disputes to arbitration.

Plaintiff, on behalf of himself and other similarly situated current and former Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc. ("B&D") employees, sued B&D asserting three sets of claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. 201 et seq., and the New York Labor Law ("NYLL"), N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 12 section 142-2.2. At issue was whether B&D owed plaintiff compensation for all the time he spent commuting between home and the job site ("commute time claims") and overtime hours that plaintiff allegedly worked but did not record ("off-the-clock claims"). The court held that the district court properly granted B&D summary judgment on the commute time claims where, even if plaintiff's activities were integral and indispensable to his principal activities, they did not render the entirety of his commute time compensable under the FLSA. The court also held that plaintiff raised genuine issues of material fact on his off-the-clock claims where plaintiff presented sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that he had shown the amount of his uncompensated work as a matter of just and reasonable inference.

The United States sued the New York City Board of Education and related parties ("City Defendants") claiming a violation of Title VII's prohibition of disparate impact selection measures. The parties entered into a settlement in 1999 despite objections from incumbent employees who were denied leave to intervene in the suit. The incumbent employees' lawsuits raised the issue of whether the City Defendants' voluntary implementation of the settlement agreement violated section 703(a) of Title VII and 42 U.S.C. 1983. In addition to the central holding, the court addressed several other issues. The court held that because the district court in its Title VII analysis reached results inconsistent with the Supreme Court's subsequent decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, its judgment must be vacated and remanded with two exceptions. First, the court affirmed the district court's grant of class certification and second, paragraph 4 of the district court's declaratory judgment had not been appealed and therefore must stand.

Petitioners, registered nurses ("RNs") employed in the region, filed a complaint alleging that various hospital owners and operators in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metropolitan area had conspired to depress the compensation of RNs in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. 1. A petition for leave to appeal was filed well outside the limitations period but filed within the fourteen days of the district court's denial of the motion to amend the class certification. At issue was whether such a denial constituted "an order granting or denying class-action certification" for purposes of Federal Rule of Civil Procedures 23(f). The court dismissed the petition and held that petitioners failed to timely petition with respect to an order reviewable pursuant to Rule 23(f) where an interlocutory appeal under Rule 23(f) could not properly be taken from an order denying amendment to a previous order granting class certification, at least when the motion to amend was filed fourteen days after the original order granting class certification.