Articles Posted in Class-Action

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As useful as cars are, they can also be extremely dangerous when mishandled. The government takes measures to improve safety by installing traffic lights and road signs and requiring drivers to complete training and pass multiple tests before they’re permitted take a car out on the road on their own. But what about when the car malfunctions?

Losing control of your vehicle is one of the most frightening things that can happen to a driver, but according to a recent proposed class action consumer lawsuit against GM, an alleged defect in some of the cars they make causes just that.

The class action consumer lawsuit was filed by Briana M., the owner of a Chevy Cruze. Briana alleges a defect in the electronic power steering system causes the steering wheel to lock into the straight position when the car has been traveling in one direction for an extended period of time, for example, when driving on a highway. Continue reading ›

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Large companies sometimes try to look for ways of getting around the laws that protect their employees by requiring their workers to sign contracts in which they agree to forfeit certain rights guaranteed them by law.

Flowers Foods, Inc. is one of the leading producers and marketers of packaged bakery foods in the U.S. Until recently, the company maintained a distribution model in which its distributors were classified as independent contractors.

Independent contractors are self-employed workers who run their own businesses. They are not subject to any of the protections under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), including minimum wage and overtime regulations. Because the FLSA does not extend its protections to independent contractors, it is very specific about the requirements workers must meet in order to be considered independent contractors. Continue reading ›

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Millions of car owners use motor oil to keep their engines running smoothly, but buying the wrong oil can do more harm than good.

To many consumers, one brand of motor oil is much like any other brand. But according to a recent consumer class action lawsuit against Dollar General, the discount retailer has been taking advantage of this assumption by selling their own brand of motor oil at a much lower cost than other brands, but there’s a catch.

The fine print on the back of the bottle says the oil is not intended for use in cars made after 1988. Dollar General’s oil is marked as 10W-30 and stored on shelves right next to oil meant for newer vehicles, so many consumers assume there’s no real difference, other than the price. Because Dollar General’s brand is considerably cheaper, many consumers buy it thinking they can use the motor oil in any car, but that’s not actually the case.

Joe Wood, a plaintiff in one of the consumer lawsuits against Dollar General, says his car died after he started using Dollar General’s brand of motor oil.

Tom Glenn, the president of the Petroleum Quality Institute of America, said that he considers Dollar General’s motor oil to be obsolete, because it should only be used on cars 28 years or older. The class action consumer lawsuit likewise called the motor oil obsolete, but Dollar General objected to the use of that word, saying their oil can be used in the millions of cars that were made prior to 1988 that are still on the road. Continue reading ›

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As Earth’s population continues to increase, sometimes it seems like our world is getting smaller as technological advances manage to give the appearance that people thousands of miles away are right in front of you. Shortly after the birth of the Internet, single people started using it to find other single people with similar interests. Numerous sites have been created that match people up based on geography, interests, and various preferences expressed by each member.

One such popular dating site, called It’s Just Lunch International Inc., encourages single people to meet other single people in their area for lunch, but users of the site sued the company for allegedly ignoring their dating preferences when matching people up with other singles.

The lawsuit was filed by nine plaintiffs in 2007 who combined their claims and sought to represent a total of more than 250 singles. They alleged the dating service overcharged its customers for matchmaking services that claimed to be personalized, while simultaneously ignoring preferences clearly stated by the user, including age and criminal background. Instead, the lawsuit alleged the matches made by the dating site were motivated by monthly quota requirements, even when those requirements allegedly disregarded aspects of a partner plaintiffs had clearly requested. Continue reading ›

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A class action lawsuit is a lawsuit in which many plaintiffs with small claims combine their claims to file one large lawsuit against a defendant. The class action is a legal tool that is extremely beneficial for plaintiffs with small claims who have been cheated out of money or goods as a result of a company’s illegal practices.

The costs of filing a lawsuit are often too high to make it worthwhile for a plaintiff to file a claim for a few hundred, or even a few thousand dollars. Nevertheless, that amount can be significant to plaintiffs, and by cheating many people out of small sums of money, companies can illegally gain a huge profit. The opportunity to file a class action lawsuit gives plaintiffs the chance to pursue their claims and to prevent the defendant from similarly taking advantage of people in the same manner in the future.

But plaintiffs have to fit certain requirements in order for a court judge to grant class certification. The first requirement is numerosity, which means the class must be large enough to warrant pursuing the lawsuit as a class action. There is no specified number of plaintiffs that must be eligible to join a class in order to justify class certification, but in general, classes of less than 20 are not usually found sufficiently large to fulfill the numerosity requirement, while classes of 40 or more stand a pretty good chance of receiving class certification, provided the other requirements are met. Continue reading ›

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Kroger Co. is the largest operator of traditional supermarkets in the United States. It employs more than 422,000 workers and operates about 2,775 stores in 35 states across the country, plus the District of Columbia. The more employees a company manages the more careful it has to be to make sure it’s abiding by all the relevant labor laws.

In the United States the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protects all employees working throughout the country. It provides a federal minimum wage, defines overtime as any time spent working after eight hours a day or forty hours a week, and requires a premium overtime compensation of one and one-half times the employee’s normal hourly rate for all overtime worked. The FLSA does allow for certain exceptions to the overtime law, but it is very specific about the types of workers that can qualify for the overtime exemption.

Under the FLSA, an employee can be considered exempt from overtime if she fits into either the administrative, executive, or professional category. Rather than simply allowing employers to label their workers as they see fit, the FLSA provides specific qualifications employees must meet in order to be legally considered exempt from overtime. Continue reading ›

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The drastic advances in technology that have happened in recent years make many aspects of modern living much easier, but they have also put certain aspects of our lives at risk that were never at risk before. For example, as people use cash less and less and increasingly rely on their credit cards to pay for their everyday purchases, more and more people have had their credit cards compromised and used to pay for purchases they never authorized. It is now common for credit card companies to offer credit card protection, in which users won’t be made to pay for purchases they did not authorize, but credit card companies usually charge an extra fee for that protection.

Data security is doing its best to keep up with the hackers, but that’s not always possible. Many companies, especially large chains, have suffered data breaches in which hackers illegally gain access to customers’ credit card information. Since it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to locate and prosecute the hackers themselves, the company that suffered the data breach is often faced with a class action lawsuit from customers who had their credit card information exposed as a result of the company’s failure to have the proper protections in place. Continue reading ›

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The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protects all employees working throughout the United States. It guarantees things like a minimum wage (which is currently set at $7.25 per hour) access to social security, and premium compensation for all overtime worked. The FLSA also defines overtime as all overtime spent working after eight hours a day or forty hours a week.

The FLSA does allow certain workers to be held exempt from these protections, but it is very specific about the qualifications workers must meet in order to be held exempt. The Act provides employees with these protections because employers generally have much more leverage than their workers, especially workers earning minimum wage. The Act therefore withholds these protections only from employees that have sufficient leverage to negotiate their own terms of work. These employees include salaried administrative assistants, executive employees, professional employees, and independent contractors. Continue reading ›

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Gift cards can be a big money maker for some businesses. They rely on some the gift cards going unused until they expire, in which case the company gets to keep the money spent on the gift card without having to cough up the product or service it was meant to pay for. Sometimes these gift cards go unused as a result of customers receiving them for things they don’t want, they forget about them, or they are simply too busy to use them before the expiration date, but sometimes the company influences the outcome to significantly decrease the likelihood that gift cards will be used before they expire.

According to a recent class action lawsuit against SoulCycle, the fitness chain allegedly issued class passes that expired in an unreasonably short amount of time. The consumer class action lawsuit was filed in August 2015 by the lead plaintiff, Rachel C., who alleges she was unable to use her single-class pass before it expired. Continue reading ›

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When a group of plaintiffs file a class action lawsuit, the class needs to be defined. If the judge is not comfortable with the parameters of the class as laid out by the plaintiffs, the judge can deny class certification until the plaintiffs come back with parameters the judge agrees with.

In the case of the class action lawsuit against Uber, the judge eliminated two groups of drivers from the class: those who were hired for Uber through a limo service and those who signed up to drive for Uber using corporate or fictitious names. The judge deemed the claims of these drivers to be too different from the claims of the drivers who signed up as drivers for Uber under their own names to justify allowing them to join the class. Part of the judge’s reasoning for this was that Uber was not technically the employer of these drivers – the third party Uber used to hire the drivers was the legal employer of these drivers. Continue reading ›

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