You may remember that the former employees of another esteemed law firm which imploded last fall – Thelen Reid – were able to have Thelen’s counsel, Latham & Watkins, stipulate to class certification.
And while the counsel for the Thelen group is the same counsel which our class action group is using – Blum Collins – it appears as if Heller’s employment counsel, Manatt Phelps would rather fight such class certification.
This approach makes no sense at all unless the intent of John Fox, Manatt’s lead attorney on this matter, is to rack up lots of billable hours and soak money out of the estate’s pool of meager assets. By opposing class certification, Heller is stating clearly that they don’t believe in paying their former employees what they earned while they worked for the firm.
In fact, Heller Drone has learned that during discussions as to class certification and the merit of the claims of the ex-Heller employees, the following concept was pushed: ex-Hellerites had so much accrued vacation because they loved working at the firm so much and never had a chance to use it.
Once you stop laughing at the asburdity of such an idea, wait a minute while humor turns to anger, as it should. You should be angry that Heller feels a sense of entitlement in not paying wages that you as an ex-employee earned. I could see them opposing the WARN Act penalties and some of the other items discussed on this blog.
To want to fight in court over the basic principle of recognizing that there is a class of ex-employees that were thrown overboard from the S.S. Heller while shareholders scrambled for their lifeboats is not funny. It is shameful.
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