Certification Order in Polo Ralph Lauren Case

An interesting certification order was entered last year in a wage case entitled Otsuka v. Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. (N.D. Cal. 2008) 251 F.R.D. 439. For those of you who like to collect such orders, here is a link to the order by District Court Judge Susan Illston, who held that: (1) numerosity requirement was satisfied; (2) commonality requirement was satisfied with respect to main class; (3) commonality requirement was satisfied with respect to subclass that consisted of former sales associates who had been misclassified as exempt from premium overtime compensation; (4) commonality requirement was satisfied with respect to arrears subclass; (5) named plaintiffs who had been forced or coerced to skip rest breaks as part of culture established by employer that discouraged taking of rest breaks were typical of main class; (6) employer's payment of overtime to named plaintiffs did not prevent claims of those plaintiffs from being typical of absent class members; (7) disagreements that had arisen in past between class counsel and named plaintiff did not adversely affect adequacy of representation requirement; and (8) common questions predominated over individual questions.