Magistrate Recommends Sanctions Against Florida FLSA Lawyers
A federal magistrate judge has recommended that three Plaintiffs' lawyers who specialize in handling Fair Labor Standards Act cases in the Middle District of Florida be reprimanded as a sanction for their routine failure to comply with the Court's pretrial orders.
The magistrate's report and recommendation illustrates the growing pains these Plaintiffs' firms have experienced due to the high volume of FLSA cases they are handling.
According to the R&R, two of the lawyers, K.E. Pantas and Charles Scalise, responded to the show cause order in this case (which I reported on in June) by saying that they were scaling back their practices and would be handling a smaller volume of FLSA cases.
But it remains to be seen whether the overall volume of FLSA cases in the Middle District of Florida will decrease, or whether other firms will pick up the slack. Since Plaintiffs' lawyers have figured out that there's money to be made in FLSA cases, I'd bet on the latter. I'd also bet that with a smaller volume of cases, Plaintiffs' lawyers will litigate cases more aggressively, and that defense lawyers will be seeing more motions to certify collective actions.
