Meal and rest lawsuit settles for $130M

In what is believed to be the largest settlement of a meal and rest period class action in state history, a security company agreed to pay $130 million Monday to settle a long-running dispute with former security officers who said the business violated multiple labor laws.

The case has proven instrumental in establishing the use of statistical analysis for the purpose of gaining class certification for meal and rest disputes.

Filed about a dozen years ago in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the case involved a class of 13,500 former and current security officers, now represented by Jason Marsili of Rosen Marsili Rapp LLP and Emily Rich of Weinberg Roger & Rosenfeld APC, who allege British multinational security services company G4S, formerly known as The Wackenhut Corporation, violated California labor laws by failing to provide employees with off-duty meal and rest breaks and by providing inadequate wage statements. Wackenhut Wage and Hour Cases JCCP4545 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed July 16, 2008).

"After 14 years of litigation, at the end of the day, I am very pleased with the settlement," Marsili said Monday. "It was a very hard fought litigation, and it took effort on both sides."

"The agreement marks the largest settlement of a meal and rest period class action in state history," Marsili's firm said in a press release.

The rocky road to class certification began when the trial court initially granted the plaintiffs' motion for certification in 2010 after counsel demonstrated, though statistical analysis, a significant number of class members signed written on-duty meal period agreements that did not include certain required revocation language, according to Marsili.

The decision to use statistical sampling in lieu of full discovery came after the court reasoned full discovery would be burdensome and time-consuming.

However, as the case approached trial, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a grant of class certification in an unrelated gender discrimination case in which counsel used statistical analysis to gain certification. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011).

Relying on the decision in Wal-Mart, the security company, then represented by Theodore J. Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, filed a motion for decertification, which the trial court granted.

Marsili then appealed the decertification motion, and in 2016 Presiding Justice Norman L. Epstein and a panel from the 2nd District Court of Appeals ruled the lower court erred in granting G4S' motion to decertify.

"Wal-Mart does not prohibit the broad use of statistical sampling in class action lawsuits," Epstein wrote in his published opinion before quoting the Supreme Court decision, which said, "'Wal-Mart does not 'stand for the broad proposition that a representative sample is an impermissible means of establishing class wide liability.'"

The appellate court concluded statistical sampling may not have been sufficiently reliable to certify the class in Wal-Mart, a case based on gender discriminations, but it was sufficient in this consolidated wage-and-hour matter. Lubin v. The Wackenhut Corporation, 2016 DJDAR 11532 (Cal.App. 2nd Dist. Nov. 21, 2016).

The settlement, reached with the help of Jeff Krivis of First Mediation in Encino, comes after a lengthy two-day session in which Marsili met with GS4 counsel Stephen E. Ronk of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP.

The settlement is pending approval of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Ronk was unavailable for comment on Monday. However, GS4 released a statement on Jan. 22 stating: "G4S has continuously updated its standard operating procedures in California in order to eliminate the circumstances giving rise to these labour claims. The Group has no other significant labour claims in California or elsewhere in the United States."