Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

There was also one last year regarding ageism and getting rid of people in pursuit of the diversity objective; don't know the disposition of it.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that a plaintiff bringing age discrimination claims against AT&T has sufficiently alleged at the motion to dismiss stage that a collective action waiver she signed as part of her severance agreement was unlawfully obtained.

In a Feb. 13 opinion, U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied AT&T’s motion to dismiss.

The plaintiff, Patrice Kantz, alleged that AT&T conducted a series of group layoffs—referred to by the company as “surpluses”—that discriminated against older employees. Employees who were part of the layoffs were notified before the effective date of the termination and given a period of time to apply for other positions within the company. Those who didn’t get another position with AT&T were instead offered severance benefits in exchange for signing a “General Release and Waiver” of all claims through termination, including ADEA claims and collective actions, Pappert wrote.

The surplus notification documentation Kantz received included a copy of the general release and waiver and disclosures required under the ADEA, as amended by the Older Workers’ Benefit Protection Act, according to Pappert.

Kantz signed the general release but later alleged that the disclosures the defendant provided were deficient under the OWBPA and that AT&T knew this. She argued that AT&T also knew the waiver was unenforceable.

In addition, Kantz alleged that the terminated employees’ waiver of their procedural ADEA collective action rights was procured by “’fraud, deceit, unconscionability and/or bad faith,’” rendering the waiver unenforceable. Kantz claimed employees signed the release and waiver believing, based on AT&T’s misrepresentations, that they had already released their substantive ADEA claims.

Kantz argued AT&T should be barred from asserting the waiver defense under the doctrine of unclean hands, arguing that AT&T obtained the collective action waiver by means of an “unconscionable act.”

AT&T argued that Katz’s allegations sounded in fraud and were thus subject to—but fell short of—Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s heightened pleading standard, which requires a plaintiff to “state the circumstances of the alleged fraud with sufficient particularity to place the defendant on notice of the precise misconduct with which it is charged.”

But Pappert determined that Kantz’s allegations were sufficiently particular to put AT&T on notice of the particulars of Kantz’s claim, as Kantz alleged “that the January 28, 2019 Surplus Notification letter she received from AT&T stated that it was providing employees a ‘General Release and Waiver.’ But ‘[t]his statement misrepresented that the release document that AT&T was providing the employee with was a ‘general’ release, when in fact, AT&T knew that the document was not an enforceable release under the ADEA.’”

“There must be a ‘close’ nexus between the alleged misconduct and the equitable claim. Kantz alleges that AT&T obtained by means of fraud the waiver it now asks the Court to enforce. This is type of relationship that the doctrine of unclean hands demands,” concluded the court.

Ultimately, Pappert decided that, at this stage in the litigation, he could not conclude that the behavior alleged by Kantz failed to rise to the level of “shock[ing]” the court’s “moral sensibilities” so as to justify denial of equitable relief.

“Kantz has sufficiently alleged, for purposes of surviving a motion to dismiss, that the doctrine of unclean hands bars application of the collective action waiver. AT&T may address this and other arguments at later stages in the litigation,” Pappert said.

“We are pleased with the ruling,” said plaintiffs counsel Stephen G. Console of Console Mattiacci Law in Philadelphia.

Counsel for the defendant, Kenneth W. Gage of Paul Hastings in New York, declined to comment.

So desperate!