Securing a decisive win in a case that spanned 15 years, a Fox Rothschild litigation team led by partner Colin Dougherty persuaded the federal appeals court in Chicago to reject claims by a trio of satellite service technicians who said a lower court had improperly decertified their statewide wage-and-hour class action.

The plaintiffs had demanded $25 million for the class, alleging violations of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law and the Fair Labor Standards Act. They claimed DirectSat had failed to compensate them for work performed in excess of 40 hours per week and off-the-clock tasks such as vehicle maintenance and preparation for service calls.

After more than a decade of litigation and discovery, a trial judge decertified the case in May 2022 and the three named plaintiffs appealed.

Fox Appellate Practice Co-Chair Marsha Piccone assisted in defending Fox’s lower court victory in the appeal, joining Dougherty and a team that included Beth L. Weisser, Shannon O'Malley, and Marc Smith.

In the appeal, lawyers for the plaintiffs insisted that the case should have been allowed to continue as a class because all of the workers shared a common legal question.

But Dougherty, who argued the case before a three-judge panel, said the lower court was correct in concluding that a class action was impractical and would not improve efficiency. Instead, he argued, establishing liability and damages would require separate trials for each technician, ultimately resulting in hundreds of individual proceedings rather than an efficient class action resolution.

The 7th Circuit panel adopted Dougherty’s arguments. The court noted that since each technician’s supervisor had discretion over their daily tasks and timekeeping practices, there were inconsistencies in how work was recorded and compensated, making it impossible to establish a class-wide liability determination.

The court emphasized that the resolution of individual claims would still require extensive fact-finding that could not be achieved through a class action.