The Court Denied HSG's Motion to Decertify the Class of Salaried Account Managers
5/18/2015
On May 18, 2015, the Court denied HSG's Motion to Decertify the Class of Salaried Account Managers. In its Order (read here) the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas noted as follows:
The Court pauses to note that HSG’s oversimplification, over-characterization, and cherry-picking of the actual testimony given are common themes. Given the thousands of pages of deposition testimony, it is not surprising that each side has plenty of fodder for comparisons. However, time and time again, HSG makes a broad, sweeping conclusion and cites to testimony, which upon substantive analysis, is most often out of context and does not support its claim.
In HSG’s motion, in the “factual background” section, HSG makes sweeping pronouncements about how different the Plaintiffs’ testimony is purported to be. The Court reviewed all the underlying testimony and is forced to disagree with HSG’s characterizations. To take but one example of many, Defendant cited to ten lines of testimony of account manager Padraig Mcauley for the proposition that she was involved in firing employees. (Mot. at 5 & n.44). However, upon the Court’s review, the Court found that in the next five lines Mcauley backtracked, saying, “Well, I can’t terminate an employee without approval from my district manager. And usually what will happen is the district manager will come in and review their file and any write-ups or whatever and then make the decision whether or not to terminate them.” (Mcauley Depo. 138:25–139:5, Mot. Ex. 81). It is precisely this type of cherry-picking of testimony that makes HSG’s positions appear defensible on their face, but it also causes their ultimate conclusions to fall apart upon closer inspection. Such actions ultimately force the Court to lose faith in HSG’s credibility on these critical issues.