he thought it was too many districts too many this too many that we then took that discussion and we put it into twenty eight different class with each individual name i know i'm asking why didn't you found twenty some collective actions i deny files i thought you had i could have but i did not want to run into the wrath of judge fees who said no there is no collective action they tried to have me versus rogers though kind of fatal to the joinder approach in this case i'm not sure it doesn't help you know it doesn't help me but i don't think it really hurts me that much that's that was my assessment and i will say that because first and foremost we still have the when you look at the standards for joint or we have common issues we have common facts we have a much smaller group to keep held together with and the alternative while the court doesn't think we'll end up with twenty six hundred settled the twenty seven first name plaintiffs in those cases which is under the single judge rule and we proceeded to have a right to appeal so that's what the way we went with it so  which gets to the point question of why are we fussing about these other mechanisms but if you let out the six hundred thirty seven thousand dollars and filing fees i already paid thirty thousand filing fees just in a sixty day period i was filing things and then we had to get new retainer print out six hundred complaints and whether we could mechanically have done that with all that done it's been done oh i know and i the second best way to do it i don't i do not want to see the judges were complaining this is tying up their dockets and i understand that and i understand it this is going to become quite a mess if we go that way and it's what i'm trying to avoid the honest i have a procedural question in this instance is this instance procedure this case procedurally in the same posture as the other one in that the people appealing that the first party settle down and the people appealing are the ones who try to join in cases what would happen we probably would not have brought a would have been able to bring a misdemeanor motion because i would have enjoyably would have moved to consolidate because you don't want six hundred cases or somebody would have moved right perhaps but one thing i do want to point out though is what's the difference if you have six hundred cases in the same place either way well the difference is in this case there were twenty eight there were twenty eight separate lawsuits filed when as the record shows when we tried to take discovery from the name plaintiffs of those twenty on those twenty eight cases twelve and just didn't show up in just their cases got dismissed because they didn't want to be part of the case the reality of this these types of cases when you have six hundred case that's what's going to happen in a lot of the instances you're going to get people who who are going to say you know what this isn't you know i thought i was just signing up to be part of a collective action was going to get a check at the end of the day if i actually have to sit for a deposition that's not something i want to do  and that's the reality of these types of cases and that's why the certification that's why employers move for decertification and in these situations in part is because the that the individual plaintiffs who are joining on to what other people are doing don't necessarily want to do that when they have their own individual case and so i think that's part of the reality here the the plaintiffs in this case also didn't make any effort to  or didn't makes fish an effort to actually address the issues and judge jesus do search as far as what what they needed to show to be similarly situated so for example if a group of ten i'm sorry the standard for joining was not in terms similarly situated right not exactly but it's close it's it is a little more stringent standard i think is the court is noted but they have to show that common transaction or occurrence and in a common question of fact or law if you had a situation perhaps where some of the decertified plaintiffs had said ok you know there's five of us we all have the same supervisor that supervisor told us you can't submit overtime less than an hour they would have they would have a case that would be a situation where that would fit within judge fees is order as far as they would have individual  claims and that's something they could bring but instead what they did here is just through and said ok everyone who ever might have worked at the station for a month or two you know these hundred twenty are going to be part of a case and that doesn't meet the joinder standard that's not the same now or do they get to go forward for georgia purposes on their allegation well i think the record is relevant because otherwise you're going to have the same lawsuit over and over and over again and getting dismissed over and over again that's why should've been  when it wasn't a determination on the merits you told me it wasn't well it was a determination on the a not on the merits of the entire case but it was a determination on a specific issue that's relevant to the case management and relevant to the determination of whether or not feasted this because he wanted to get a sense of where these facts lead they did that a lot of time spent a lot of witnesses made a determination that essentially the same information was given for with respect to the other people same initial affidavits and so on and he came to a conclusion how does another words how does this an exemplar trial fit into in this particular rule twenty and twenty one how does that work well i think the exemplar trial gives the court the perspective to determine whether or not these events which the plants are alleging are related together really are related together so it is what i'm saying to judge these determine that they are not to get to the issue preclusion concept does the determination made with respect to the nolan case plaintiffs can that be applied in any way to the other plaintiffs in the in the in the action hundreds of other places i don't know there was a specific determination made and no one as i mean it each their own case matter that the written policy doesn't say that doesn't apply and is certainly not being used by people so here you have a trial about that issue and the judge makes a determination does that have any bearing on the on you know found four that the department on some issues and found for the plaintiffs on some of the issues of that as far as what impact that has on on the court is i think that that was a factor in judge doesn't have the care less action case management patients but when you say similarly situated as we've talked about before that's not really defined i understand and i'm not in my case management is this is a i mean maybe it's relevant because situated judge fees you can look back to a case involving the exact same counsel parties and so and so forth and say based on what i saw in that jury trial these are not similarly these are not likely to be s situated based on the rest of the evidence presented in but in the motion by both parties that these are not going to be similar types are claiming orders in these cases the opinions a aside i think that that some of the orders definitely looked at many of them looked at what judge visa done looked at the pleadings and then the judges all thirteen of the judges made their own decision on whether or not these plaintiffs were appropriately  that's the same situation like the wal mart the dukes the wal mart case it's the same thing there i mean it's well except this is a lot more cohesive than that in the sense that this is all in you know in in  one city under one set of rules i mean the whole thing that was so odd about the wal mart case is that the the policy was no policy essentially their policy was not to have a policy where you say we do have a policy right but the plaintiffs they are trying to eventual stations and that's what they're now doing individual stores in that instance my understanding is that has gone probably in some and sub categories and that's what they were trying to do here but we're not saying they couldn't go they couldn't have group the plaintiffs together who were similarly situated they just didn't do it properly in this in this instance and just knock out the people who aren't in fact in that station for example well but as judge fees looked at there is a lot more to it than that because you have somebody has a five different not if they could find similarly situated plaintiffs but i think the reality of that order is that the judge she's recognized would be almost impossible to find more then made more than maybe a few plaintiffs a handful of pla because the problem you have is only an extra but if they work in exchange well but that's so that's what they did they said the people who work the next station the problem is that's not a that's not a fixed finite group that's a very fl know because then once once you start looking at other stations other supervisors other simons other ranks people who promote use you start getting away from similarly situated when you group them together all right thank you very much was not a case where we had similarly situated persons with the people in the two cases we have here or the twenty eight nolan was assistant watch commanders and watch commanders two to three persia ft not to patrol force not the rest of the department it could never have been lateral stop or race unocal for anything because it decided a finite specific they were they had they were all there were tenants and sergeants all the watch commander positions the people who were supposed to be recording the time who were themselves complaining about not being paid the time all right