Supreme Court Short-Circuits Defense Strategy To Pick Off Class Rep

On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez that an unaccepted Rule 68 offer of judgment does not render a plaintiff's action moot, no matter how good the terms of the offer. As a result, the defendant's strategy to defeat a class action by satisfying the individual claims of the putative class representative was rejected. The case plugs a hole left open by the Court's decision in Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, 133 S. Ct. 1523 (2013), in which a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was declared moot after the lead plaintiff conceded in the district court that her individual claim had been mooted by an unaccepted offer of judgment.