January 13, 2005

The Wal-Mart class certification, overtime and employee-classification suits, pension and age-bias actions, all add up to one mighty ominous trend, according to Corporate Counsel: "'The 8.0 earthquake in employment and labor law has to be the use of class actions as a tool,' says Garry Mathiason, a San Francisco-based partner at labor and employment firm Littler Mendelson -- where the class action caseload has doubled in the past year. 'There's not a corporation in America that hasn't been affected by it.'"