Morgan v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc.

Case Updates

The Eleventh Circuit refused to consider NCLC’s second amicus brief supporting decertification.

In its second filing, NCLC urged the Eleventh Circuit to decertify a nationwide collective action for alleged misclassification of and failure to pay overtime to 1,400 managers. The decision below, resulting in the largest jury verdict in Alabama, was unprecedented in its approach both to certification of collective actions and to adjudication on the merits. In its brief, NCLC argued the district court erroneously relied on representative evidence to certify the class, and then compounded that error at the liability stage.

The Eleventh Circuit subsequently denied the NCLC’s motion for leave to file.

In its first filing, NCLC urged the Eleventh Circuit to grant a mandamus petition seeking to overturn the district court’s certification of a nationwide class in this Fair Labor standards Act (FLSA) action. NCLC argued that this case was a classic example of class action abuse and that the district court improperly found the underlying FLSA claims capable of common treatment even though they require a highly individualized analysis. NCLC also argued that in deciding the certification question, the court improperly prejudged the merits and ignored the fact that the 1,500 plaintiffs themselves established, via discovery responses, that they had significantly differing levels of managerial authority.

The case was once known as In re: Family Dollar Stores, Inc.