As CELA Chair Elizabeth Riles announced at the Annual Conference, the CELA Board has adopted the “CELA Reverse Auctions Policy” regarding overlapping representative lawsuits (e.g., class actions, collective actions, and PAGA actions) and reverse auctions. We are grateful to the task force members, who conducted research, discussions, and drafting of the new policy over the past year.

Our members have found that overlapping lawsuits are becoming more common. When this happens, it presents defendants with an opportunity to release valuable claims for inadequate relief (a “reverse auction”). Reverse auctions are a significant and increasingly common obstacle to the vindication of workers’ rights. Defendants’ use of reverse auctions, and mediators’ and courts’ approval of them, undermine workers, degrade civility within the bar, create inefficiencies, and clog the court system.

CELA is publishing this Policy (which is available on MY CELA under the Quick Links tab and at the bottom of CELA’s website so members can link to it in pleadings: https://cela.org/ReverseAuctions) to empower our members, other attorneys, mediators, courts, and others to pursue best practices to ensure that important individual rights are protected and to promote respectful, collegial, cooperative, and efficient interactions between members of the plaintiffs’ bar. Moving forward, all members will be asked to affirm they agree with the terms of the Policy.

Task Force Committee Members:

Scot Bernstein, Christina Krasomil, Cornelia Dai, Jennifer Kramer, Wendy Musell, Hunter Pyle, Cynthia Rice, Jahan Sagafi, Lenny Sansanowicz, Christian Schreiber, Bryan Schwartz, Lauren Teukolsky, Jasmin Tuffaha, Ken Wang, and Mariko Yoshihara

The Task Force can be reached at PAGACELAWorkingGroup@outtengolden.com and ReverseAuctionsCELAGroup@outtengolden.com