Articles Posted in Class Action

On May 23, 2024, after nearly a year of motions practice, Judge George L. Russell III of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland granted plaintiff’s motion to remand its putative class action to state court. Serving as local counsel, Silverman Thompson filed the class action in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on January 19, 2023. The plaintiff, who has been employed as an hourly, non-exempt worker at Johns Hopkins Hospital (“Johns Hopkins”) for over thirty years, contends that Johns Hopkins has a policy of rounding employees’ hours resulting in illegal withholding of wages, failure to pay minimum wage, and failure to pay overtime wages in violation of the Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law.

Johns Hopkins removed the matter to federal court more than seven months after receiving the complaint on the basis of federal question jurisdiction. Johns Hopkins argued that the United States District Court for the District of Maryland had jurisdiction pursuant to Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, which provides the court subject matter jurisdiction over employment disputes governed by collective bargaining agreements. Plaintiff promptly filed a motion to remand maintaining that Johns Hopkins’ removal was untimely – in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 1446, Johns Hopkins had thirty days following receipt of the complaint to file a notice of dismissal.

In its opposition, Johns Hopkins declared that its removal was timely because it first became aware on August 11, 2023, after analyzing the plaintiff’s opposition to Johns Hopkins’s motion for summary judgment, that the resolution of the claims brought against it require interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement. Consequently, Johns Hopkins argued that it filed its notice of removal twenty days after its alleged discovery and within the time limitation prescribed in 28 U.S.C. § 1446.