Month: May 2026

By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Jennifer A. Riley, Betty Luu, and Ryan T. Garippo

Duane Morris Takeaways:  On April 22, 2026, in Ayers, v. GKN Driveline North America, Inc., No. 23-CV-00581, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89819 (M.D.N.C. Apr. 22, 2026), Chief Judge Catherine Eagles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina denied several motions to certify various claims as class and collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”) and the North Carolina Wage And Hour Act (the “NCWHA”).  This decision underscores the responsibility of plaintiffs’ counsel to manage a case and present the court with a viable plan to bring their clients’ claims through trial.  Otherwise, plaintiffs’ counsel runs the risk that the court will not certify these claims at all.

Case Background

This decision emerges in the context of a series of seven-year-long lawsuits against GKN Driveline North America, Inc. (“GKN”), the supplier of all-wheel-drive and other automotive components, for several major automotive manufactures.  Plaintiffs James Ayers, John Carson, and Tameka Ferges (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) brought three separate wage-and-hour lawsuits, asserting claims under the FLSA and the NCWHA.  Plaintiffs alleged that GKN required them to perform work off the clock, including before and after shifts, and during unpaid meal breaks.

In 2018, Plaintiffs filed an earlier case against GKN.  In that case, Plaintiffs alleged GKN had two policies that resulted in underpayment of their wages: (1) a “time rounding” policy; and (2) an “automatic deduction” policy for meal breaks. The Court originally conditionally certified an FLSA collective action and a Rule 23 class action under both of those theories.  But the court ultimately decertified both the FLSA collective and the Rule 23 class, finding that “individual issues would swamp any attempt to resolve the claims on the class or collective basis.”  Id. at *5

After that decision, Plaintiffs – represented by the same counsel – refiled three similar lawsuits, which split the claims based on GKN’s plant locations, but otherwise left the theories mostly intact.  Plaintiffs then filed renewed motions for class and collective certification in each of the three actions and again asked the Court to allow them to proceed on a representative basis.  The Court’s opinion, for all three cases, followed.

The Court’s Decision

In her 28-page opinion, Chief Judge Eagles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina denied Plaintiffs’ motions based largely on manageability grounds.

Chief Judge Eagles explained that “manageability principles are explicit in the requirements for a proposed Rule 23(b)(3) class” and that “wider case management concerns remain relevant in the collective context.”  Id. at 13.  Thus, it is generally a plaintiff’s attorney’s responsibility to present the court with an “organized presentation of claims, organized discovery and motions practice, and organized submission of evidence.”  Id.  But here, Plaintiff’s counsel failed to present a manageable class or collective in at least four different ways.

First, and perhaps most fundamentally, Chief Judge Eagles found that “plaintiffs propose no efficient method of resolving class-wide liability and individual damages across three different subclasses.”  Id. at *18.  Although Plaintiffs’ theory was premised on the notion that GKN had a “de facto off-the-clock” policy, Plaintiffs did not explain how they planned to “efficiently prove that each and every nonexempt employee was subject to that de facto policy and, even more crucially, how each class member was injured by this policy.”  Id. at *18-19.  Chief Judge Eagles found this omission troubling given that “plaintiffs have had years to think about these problems” and could not present the court with a manageable solution.  Id. at *19.  But Chief Judge Eagles did not stop there.

Second, having dispensed with the omissions in Plaintiffs’ theory of case manageability, Chief Judge Eagles turned to Plaintiffs’ counsel who she reasoned has “not demonstrated the organization, diligence, and mindset required to prosecute a complex case.”  Id. at *21.  Chief Judge Eagles explained that because she often had to prompt Plaintiffs’ counsel to prosecute the case, via supplemental briefing and discovery, she had lost confidence in their ability to manage the docket.  This problem was compounded by Plaintiffs’ counsel’s filing of “several ‘emergency’ motions and amended ‘emergency motions’” which underscored their inability to “handle ordinary litigation problems.”  Id. at *21-22.

Third, Chief Judge Eagles characterized Plaintiffs’ counsel’s Rule 23 analysis as the product of an unreliable “narrator of the record.”  Id. at *22-23.  She described Plaintiffs’ counsel’s submissions as “inaccurate at best and misrepresentations at worst.”  Id. at *23.  Similarly, for the FLSA claims, Chief Judge Eagles held that the “factual representations about the evidence in the plaintiffs’ briefing on an FLSA collective do not always hold up to scrutiny.”  Id. at *31-32.  These inaccuracies did not give her confidence that Plaintiffs’ counsel would be able to present a manageable case through trial.

Fourth, as to the FLSA claims, Chief Judge Eagles concluded by finding that “the plaintiffs have not proposed any plan, much less a workable plan, for the aggregation of all these claims.”  Id. at *31.  For example, Chief Judge Eagles highlighted that plaintiffs “have not explained how they will manage presenting evidence on all the different work activities at issue and [across] three different plants.”  Id.  She noted that – although it is often possible for plaintiffs’ counsel to create such theories —  “[i]f they are unable to make the required showing after over seven years of litigation, there is no reason to think they will be able to do so by the time these cases are called for trial.”  Id. at *33.

In short, Chief Judge Eagles explained that she “has certified several dozen class actions over the past fifteen years and is familiar with how to deal with disagreements between parties about managing and trying common and individual issues.”  Id. at *26.  “The problem here is not that management might be hard” but rather “that the plaintiffs proffer no plan for management . . . [a]nd the Court has no confidence that counsel will devise a workable plan.”  Id.  Thus, the motions were denied in their entirety.

Implications For Employers

Ayers presents two key lessons for corporate counsel grappling with how to manage these complex cases.

The first lesson is that the value of class and collective claims often can hinge on the identity and competency of opposing counsel.  Where plaintiffs’ counsel is savvy, competent, and organized, the value of otherwise weaker claims can go up.  In these cases, competent plaintiffs’ counsel can often be the difference in whether a class is certified, which is often the difference between millions of dollars of potential of exposure and not.  Thus, corporate counsel should weigh the competency of his or her adversaries when assessing the risk that a putative class or collective action poses.

The second lesson is that hiring experienced defense counsel and developing an aggressive litigation strategy are critical for success in such cases.  In Ayers, Chief Judge Eagles observed defense counsel’s strategy and explained “it has been clear for years that GKN intended to hold the plaintiffs to their burden of proof at every stage on every issue, as is their right.”  Id. at *22, n.13.  As a result, any delay by GKN ultimately did not negate the deficiencies by Plaintiffs’ counsel.  It takes experienced counsel to toe this line and keep the focus on a plaintiff’s conduct.  Corporate counsel should consider such experience when deciding who is best to represent their organizations.