Justices slant toward workers in class- action fight

To determine overtime, Supreme Court majority appears to favor law of averages

“I just don’t understand your arguments. The case has been argued on different theories at many points.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy to Tyson Foods attorney Carter Phillips

The last of three major Supreme Court cases testing the legitimacy of class- action lawsuits may produce an unlikely victory for labor over management.

The Supreme Court appeared Tuesday to side with workers at an Iowa pork processing plant demanding overtime pay for time spent putting on and removing sanitary and protective gear, even though their class action hinges on statistical averages rather than actual time records.

At least five justices expressed sympathy for the workers’ argument that since Tyson Foods kept no records of the time spent preparing for slaughter and processing assembly lines, they could rely on a 69year- old Supreme Court precedent permitting such averaging.

The workers’ challenge was the third case to reach the high court during the past month pitting workers or consumers against companies in what often are multimillion dollar battles over class- action lawsuits. Workers and consumers depend on such collaborations; businesses say they gloss over different grievances and grant awards even to those who were unaffected.

In each case, the justices agreed to hear petitions from companies seeking to overturn lower court rulings that allowed such lawsuits to proceed. Just by granting each case, the conservative- leaning court appeared to signal its intentions. But at Tuesday’s oral argument, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the court’s four liberal justices said Tyson Foods failed to make a convincing argument against averaging workers’ preparation time.

Tyson Foods, one of the world’s leading producers of meat and poultry, is trying to knock down a class- action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 3,300 current and former plant workers seeking overtime pay. Its claim that the workers don’t share enough common traits to sue as a class follows similar cases heard over the past month in which companies argued that consumers could not prove any injury or had been offered complete restitution.

The common issue connecting this term’s cases is what type of injury rises to the level of a lawsuit — in particular, one in which hundreds or thousands of people can join together. The question is important, because while plaintiffs stand to gain from jury awards that can reach into the millions or even billions of dollars, companies face potentially ruinous verdicts.

APRIL L. BROWN, AP Tyson Foods, headquartered in Springdale, Ark., is at the center of a legal dispute over class- action lawsuits.