Opinion ID: 7263
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Spurious Class Action

Text: The second line of cases is typified by Shushan v. University of Colorado, 132 F.R.D. 263 (D.Colo.1990). Shushan espouses the 8 At the notice stage, courts appear to require nothing more than substantial allegations that the putative class members were together the victims of a single decision, policy, or plan infected by discrimination. Sperling v. Hoffman-La Roche, Inc., 118 F.R.D. at 407. 8 view that § 16(b) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) merely breathes new life into the so-called spurious class action procedure previously eliminated from Fed.R.Civ.P. 23. Building on this foundation, the court determined that Congress did not intend to create a completely separate class action structure for the FLSA and ADEA context, but merely desired to limit the availability of Rule 23 class action relief under either Act. In application, the court determined that Congress intended the similarly situated inquiry to be coextensive with Rule 23 class certification. In other words, the court looks at numerosity, commonality, typicality and adequacy of representation to determine whether a class should be certified. Under this methodology, the primary distinction between an ADEA representative action and a Fed.R.Civ.P. 23 class action is that persons who do not elect to opt-in to the ADEA representative action are not bound by its results. In contrast, Rule 23 class members become party to the litigation through no action of their own, and are bound by its results.