The past decade has witnessed an explosion of wage and hour complaints in state and federal courts. Once primarily the domain of administrative agencies, and relatively limited monetarily, the plaintiffs' bar has discovered the high exposure often associated with these claims, especially when pursued as collective or class actions.

Our firm practices extensively in the wage and hour arena, which is governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and its state law counterparts. Several of our attorneys have developed unusual technical expertise in this constantly evolving and extremely technical area of the law. In addition to writing and lecturing for local and national audiences, we regularly update our clients on how regulatory changes, developing case law, and ever-changing technology impact their overtime, break period, bonus, recordkeeping, and other policies.

We have served as lead counsel across the country in wage and hour litigation, including in FLSA collective or class actions, including these representative examples:

• Haas v. Behr Dayton Thermal Products LLC, Ohio Court of Appeals: The trial court denied certification of an Ohio wage and hour class action. The case was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs after the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial.
• Adams v. Plastech Engineered Products, U.S. District Court, Kentucky: We obtained summary judgment for Plastech in this purported FLSA collective action alleging improper classification of quality engineers.
• Parler v. KFC, U.S. District Court, Minnesota: We represented KFC in the Michigan portion of this nationwide multi-district litigation alleging improper classification of assistant store managers, and were also part of the national briefing team for critical aspects of the litigation.
• Jackson v. Wal-Mart Stores, Michigan Court of Appeals: We defeated certification of a purported class of over 70,000 employees in Michigan alleging that the employer had denied breaks and had compelled off the clock work.
• Severn v. Farmers Insurance Co., Michigan Court of Appeals: In this putative wage and hour class action under Michigan law, the Court of Appeals peremptorily reversed the trial court's denial of summary disposition and dismissed the litigation.
• Sterner v. Farmers Insurance Co., U.S. District Court, Michigan: We represented Farmers in this collective action in Michigan that became part of multi-district litigation based in Oregon concerning the alleged improper classification of insurance adjusters.
• Billington v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield, U.S. District Court, Michigan: This purported collective action alleged that partial day absence deductions destroyed the FLSA exemption under the salary basis test. The trial court's refusal to certify a class led to withdrawal of the action.