Wal-Mart v. Dukes
In the largest employment class action ever filed in U.S. history, Public Justice filed an amici brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that class actions often provide the only effective means to compensate wronged individuals and to sanction corporate misconduct.
As in the case before the Court, where female workers seek an average annual wage loss of $1,100 a year, either the workers proceed together as a class, or no one has the incentive or means to proceed at all.
Responding to corporations’ claims that class actions force corporations into settling meritless claims, Public Justice’s brief points to empirical evidence to show class actions settle no more frequently than individual litigation, and explains that class settlements are often won only after hard-fought, lengthy and expensive lawyering on both sides.
The brief was written by Monique Olivier of Duckworth Peters Lebowitz Olivier LLP, with assistance from James Sturdevant of the Sturdevant Law Firm; Tracy Rezvani and Karen Marcus of Finkelstein Thompson LLP; and Public Justice’s Victoria Ni, Arthur Bryant and Paul Bland.
In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the class should not be certified in its current form.
