Mon, 05/24/2021
In Benson et al. v. Enterprise Leasing Company of Florida LLC, two workers sued their former employer, the parent company of car rental firms including Enterprise Rent-A-Car, after being laid off from their jobs without notice in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act. On May 11, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the federal court where the case is now pending, certified the case as a nationwide class action. This decision represents a significant success, as hundreds of workers will now be able to join in the case to pursue their rights against Enterprise for failing to provide adequate notice of mass layoffs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Court certified a class consisting of “all Enterprise employees who worked at or reported to Enterprise facilities in the United States and were terminated without cause on or about April 24, 2020, or within 14 days of April 24, 2020, or in anticipation of, or as the foreseeable consequence of, the mass layoff of plant closing ordered on around April 24, 2020.” In granting class certification, the Court held that the lead plaintiff had adequately shown that such class members would share common legal and factual questions, based on collective evidence, regarding their layoffs. Indeed, the Court noted that the evidence presented by the plaintiffs—including but not limited to a “mass termination spreadsheet” sent by the parent company to its operating groups— “paints a compelling picture of a coordinated effort” by Enterprise. In addition, because each individual class members’ monetary damages will be relatively small, the Court held that a class action is a superior method of adjudicating the class members’ WARN Act claims. The parties are now required to work together to draft a Notice for the Court’s approval that will ultimately be sent out to all class members with further information about their rights in the lawsuit.
For more information about your rights, or if you believe you were laid off in violation of the WARN Act, please contact MSE at info@mselaborlaw.com.
