Brokers Take A Bath In FLSA Collective Action

Former brokers of Fordham Financial Management will have to put this one in the "loss" column. Judge Paul Crotty of the Southern District of New York granted Fordham's motion to decertify the FLSA collective in their lawsuit alleging they were misclassified as independent contractors.

The brokers initially succeeded in obtaining conditional certification of their misclassification claims under the relatively lenient FLSA standard in Griffith v. Fordham Financial Management, Inc. About a year later, the Plaintiffs moved for class certification under Rule 23, but the court denied the motion because they "failed to demonstrate that the primary dispute–whether Defendants 'misclassified potential class members as independent contractors, rather than employees'–was capable of resolution by classwide proof." Buoyed by that success, the Defendants then sought decertification of the FLSA collective action.