Kin Care/Sick Leave: Hunter Pyle Law Intervenes in Lawsuit to Fight Off Another Reverse Auction

Reverse auctions have become a major front in the fight for wage justice. A reverse auction occurs when an employee files a class or representative action on behalf of other employees to recover unpaid wages, and an employer tries to settle that employee’s claims in a completely separate lawsuit with a weaker plaintiff’s attorney that has nothing to do with those claims—often for pennies on the dollar.

Recently, Hunter Pyle Law faced a reverse auction of Kin-Care and Paid Sick-Leave claims that they had brought against Pacific Bell Telephone Company (“AT&T”). These claims alleged that AT&T treated employee use of protected kin-care leave as an attendance violation. One month after the firm filed its lawsuit against AT&T in Alameda County, AT&T tried to settle those claims in a completely separate action in Los Angeles. Shockingly, AT&T tried to settle those claims for less than 1% of what we believe they are worth. AT&T then withheld this information from Hunter Pyle Law until the Los Angeles Court had preliminarily approved its reverse-auction settlement.

Hunter Pyle Law then filed a motion to intervene in order to challenge the settlement. After robust motion practice and oral argument, the Court granted our firm’s motion. Hunter Pyle Law will now be able to directly oppose the sham reverse-auction settlement, and hopefully continue our fight for full value on our client’s claims in Alameda County.