Wage Law

Judge Sabraw, in the Southern District of California, denied class certification today in a case involving Countrywide Home Loan Consultants. Plaintiffs sought to certify a class of potentially 3000 Home Loan Consultants, alleging that they should be non-exempt employees, but Judge Sabraw denied class certification because the Court had to undertake an individual inquiry to determine how many Loan Consultants were misclassified. Because individual questions of fact predominated over common factual questions, certification was denied. Countrywide had classified all of its Home Loan Consultants as exempt from overtime based on the outside sales exemption. It appears that with the recent denial of class certification in the Maddock v. KB Homes case, the tide may be turning on what appeared like almost certain certification in these misclassification class actions.