Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk

As reported by law360 and the ScotusBlog, today the Supreme Court announced that it had granted Certiori to a Defendant-employer who sought to moot a putative collective action by offering “full relief” to the named-Plaintiff before she could file a motion seeking conditional certification of her claims as a collective action.

Initially, the trial court dismissed the plaintiff’s claims noting that:

 [Plaintiff] does not contend that other individuals have joined her collective action. Thus, this case, like each of the district court cases cited by Defendants, which concluded that a Rule 68 offer of judgment mooted the underlying FLSA collective action, involves a single named plaintiff. In addition, Symczyk does not contest Defendants’ assertion that the 68 offer of judgment fully satisfied her claims….

However, the Third Circuit reversed reasoning, in part:

When Rule 68 morphs into a tool for the strategic curtailment of representative actions, it facilitates an outcome antithetical to the purposes behind § 216(b). Symczyk’s claim-like that of the plaintiff in Weiss—was “acutely susceptible to mootness” while the action was in its early stages and the court had yet to determine whether to facilitate notice to prospective plaintiffs. See Weiss, 385 F.3d at 347 (internal quotation marks omitted). When the certification process has yet to unfold, application of the relation back doctrine prevents defendants from using Rule 68 to “undercut the viability” of either’ type of representative action. See id. at 344.…

In sum, we believe the relation back doctrine helps ensure the use of Rule 68 does not prevent a collective action from playing out according to the directives of § 216(b) and the procedures authorized by the Supreme Court in Hoffmann–La Roche and further refined by courts applying this statute. Depriving the parties and the court of a reasonable opportunity to deliberate on the merits of collective action “conditional certification” frustrates the objectives served by § 216(b). Cf. Sandoz, 553 F.3d at 921 (explaining “there must be some time for a[n FLSA] plaintiff to move to certify a collective action before a defendant can moot the claim through an offer of judgment”). Absent undue delay, when an FLSA plaintiff moves for “certification” of a collective action, the appropriate course—particularly when a defendant makes a Rule 68 offer to the plaintiff that would have the possible effect of mooting the claim for collective relief asserted under § 216(b)—is for the district court to relate the motion back to the filing of the initial complaint.

Now the Supreme Court will apparently be weighing in on the issue.  

Of note, the plaintiff was a single plaintiff and had not sought conditional certification of a collective action at the time the defendant sought to moot the claim.  We will see how much, if at all, these facts play into the Court’s decision to come. 

Click ScotusBlog to read the briefs and Overtime Law Blog, to read our initial post regarding the 3rd Circuit’s Opinion.