Next step set for Fuyao workers’ suit

The U.S. District Court in Cincinnati is continuing to set rules for the discovery phase of a workers’ class-action lawsuit against Fuyao Glass America.

According to a report filed with the court Monday, the discovery process will be limited to 120 “opt-in” plaintiffs.

Fuyao, one of the Dayton area’s fastest-growing manufacturers, is being sued by 636 current and former workers in a legal bid to change the way the company schedules and pays employees.

For the “opt-in” class, Fuyao gets to choose 80 plaintiffs, the plaintiffs themselves get to choose 20 opt-in plaintiffs and another 20 will be randomly selected, the court said in the new report.

In a lawsuit’s discovery phase, before the trial happens, lawyers for each side depose or interview participants in the case, request documents and gather information to build their respective cases.

“It’s customary to do what we call a discovery sample class,” said Bob DeRose, the Columbus attorney representing plaintiffs in the case.

The idea is to save time by selecting a set of “representative” plaintiffs, avoiding the need to depose all of the more than 600 plaintiffs in the case.

Tied to the case also are 4,000 plaintiffs in a possible “putative Ohio class,” a number that includes both current and former Fuyao employees.

“They do (have 4,000 putative class members), because I can go back three years,” DeRose said. “Fuyao is a huge case.”