The monetary value of employment-related class actions hit an all-time high last year, according to a report by Seyfarth Shaw, with the top 10 settlements totaling $2.48 billion. That’s up from $1.87 billion in 2014, a 33 percent increase.
“Exposures for corporate America have never been higher, and employers face a new wave of ‘bet-the-company’ risks that have reached a multi-billion dollar watermark for the first time,” Gerald Maatman Jr., who co-chairs the firm’s class action defense group, said in a news release. “This reverses a trend that began with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wal-Mart decision in 2011, which had made it harder for plaintiffs to convert class action filings into big settlements.”
