Federal Appeals Court chucks class certification for NC, SC Bojangles workers

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the class certification for a lawsuit involving Bojangles shift managers in North Carolina and South Carolina. The workers make claims of unpaid off-the-clock work and unauthorized edits of their time records.

Tuesday’s decision sends the case back to US District Judge Max Cogburn in North Carolina’s Western District.

“The classes certified had only one parameter: class members must have worked as a Bojangles shift manager in the relevant state within three years of the filed complaint,” wrote Judge Harvie Wilkinson for a unanimous three-judge appellate panel. “We hold that the district court abused its discretion in certifying this class action because it employed an inappropriately high level of generality when (1) identifying the policies which allegedly unify prospective class members’ wide-ranging claims, and (2) creating overly broad class definitions.”

The case started with plaintiff Richard Stafford, who filed suit after Bojangles fired him in 2020. Stafford claimed the fast-food company “’frequently required [him] to stay on the premises, on duty, after closing to clean up and close down the restaurant’ while off the clock, did not compensate him for the time spent driving between different restaurants for work-related activities, and, as a result, failed to pay him the correct amount of overtime wages,” Wilkinson wrote.

“He alleged that his experiences were part of a systematic effort by Bojangles to artificially suppress their labor costs to stay within specified labor budgets,” Wilkinson added.

A trial judge conditionally certified a class action against the company in November 2020. “With the gates thus open, the claims against Bojangles rapidly accumulated. By April 2022, nearly 550 individuals had joined the collective action,” Wilkinson noted.

By April 2022, a new version of the lawsuit proposed classes for employees in seven states from Kentucky to Georgia. “The exact composition of claims and tasks performed varied among prospective class members,” Wilkinson wrote. “Not all claimed to have experienced time-shaving adjustments, nor did all claim to have worked off the clock in the same fashion as their peers.”

Cogburn denied class certification for workers in five states but permitted a class action for shift managers in North Carolina and South Carolina. About 80% of prospective class members worked opening shifts requiring them to complete an “opening checklist” before logging any paid work time, Wilkinson wrote.

Bojangles appealed the certification order in November 2023.

Cogburn “committed legal errors” in two ways: “relying on a vague and overly general ‘policy’ by which Bojangles allegedly mandated shift managers’ off-the-clock work and time-record edits,” and “creating overly broad class definitions,” the 4th Circuit panel determined.

Class-certification law “has been beset by a seemingly endless tug of pros and cons,” Wilkinson wrote.

“On the one hand, class actions offer the promise of resolving many similar suits at a single time,” the judge noted. “This pares defendants the drip of repeated individual actions and offers the prospect of rooting out unlawful pervasive practices through an aggregate and collective effort.”

“On the other hand, class-action lawsuits can ratchet liability to potentially ruinous levels and force companies to settle or bet the store,” Wilkinson continued. “They may incentivize litigation with awards of large attorneys’ fees at the same time class members may receive little more than a pittance.”

The court rule governing class certification “seeks a balance between the worthy uses and serious abuses of the class-action device,” the judge noted.

“Here the parameters of the North and South Carolina classes are ‘too broad and ill-defined to reach the thresholds of class certification,’” Wilkinson wrote. “The classes’ sole defining characteristic is that they contain Bojangles shift managers who worked for the company during a three-year period.”

“Simply being at a place of employment is, without more, unedifying. No reference is made to the type of off-the-clock work class members performed or whether a class member even performed off-the-clock work at all. Nor does the class definition elucidate whether class members must allege that they were denied overtime pay or were subject to time-shaving,” he explained.

“The sheer breadth of the class definitions here bespeaks underlying flaws with the classes’ commonality, predominance, and typicality,” Wilkinson added.

“An appropriate class definition should provide proper detail to identify whether or not a prospective class member was injured and whether their claim coheres with the rest of the certified class. There is no brightline rule for how such a definition should read, and district courts have discretion in their phrasing,” the 4th Circuit explained.

Cogburn might consider whether a new certification should feature subclasses. “Breaking down a broad class into subclasses can help ensure not only that common questions are properly defined and predominate within each subclass, but also that class representatives actually have claims typical of the subclass they purport to represent,” Wilkinson wrote.

“When properly crafted and certified, the class-action device can serve as an administrable vehicle favorable to the needs of all parties,” he added. “State and federal laws are both sensitive to the plight of hourly-wage employees in America and to the value of each dollar to their households. Workers deserve every penny earned for the honest work they provide their employers, and aggregate litigation may often provide the best means through which to seek relief.”

“However, the class-action mechanism is a carefully constructed compromise in our legal system — one which Article III courts play a critical role in maintaining,” Wilkinson added.

“[P]laintiffs who could never have individually marshaled the resources or satisfied jurisdictional amount-in-controversy requirements may through aggregate litigation seek proper vindication in a court of law. But, in exchange for this ability, parties must adhere to Rule 23’s prerequisites and requirements. These requirements ensure that judicial resources are not wasted pursuing litigation that is aggregate only in theory,” he wrote.

“Our goal today is simply to ensure that the class-action train stays on the tracks,” Wilkinson concluded.

Appellate Judge Nicole Berner and US District Judge Brendan Hurson of Maryland joined Wilkinson’s opinion.

The post Federal Appeals Court chucks class certification for NC, SC Bojangles workers first appeared on Carolina Journal.