Wage-and-Hour Lawsuits Surge in New York Federal Courts
By New York Law Journal
The number of wage-and-hour lawsuits has skyrocketed in New York federal courts, exceeding already-accelerating national trends.
The lawsuits, brought by workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act, generally claim employers did not pay sufficient wages or overtime, often contending they misclassified workers as exempt from overtime payments.
Among New York's four federal district courts, the largest increases are found in Southern and Eastern districts, according to Federal Judicial Center statistics provided to the New York Law Journal.
The Southern District saw 682 new FLSA suits in the last fiscal year, from Oct. 1, 2011 to Sept. 30, 2012, a 626 percent leap from 94 filings in fiscal year 2003.
Among the 94 federal judicial districts nationwide, New York's Southern District ranked third after the Southern District of Florida (1,304) and the Northern District of Alabama (1,029) last year in total new FLSA filings, according to the center, the research agency of the federal court system.
The Southern District includes Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess and Putnam counties.
The Eastern District, covering Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, ranked fifth among federal districts. It saw 579 new FLSA suits in the last fiscal year, a 916 percent jump from 57 suits in fiscal year 2003.
FLSA filings nationwide have risen at a much slower pace than those in the New York metropolitan area—showing a gain of about 200 percent in the last decade.
The FLSA law has been on the books since 1938 but the pace of lawsuits has picked up during the last decade, said Robert Whitman, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw who represents management.
Plaintiffs and defense lawyers point to a confluence of factors that are pushing more FLSA lawsuits in New York, including the potential for plaintiffs to recover attorneys fees, the state's six-year statute of limitations, increased awareness of the law and sympathetic courts.
