Munson grants motion to break up class action suit

District Court Judge Alex Munson granted yesterday the Saipan garment companies’ motion to break up the class action suit into separate proceedings.

Munson, however, gave the plaintiffs 20 days to file an amended complaint that would support their claim to keep the case as a class action.

“If plaintiffs do not amend their complaint within 20 days,” Munson said, “the claims against each individual defendant will be severed and proceed as separate actions.”

The 22 garment companies named in the class action suit had asked that the complaint be broken down into individual cases on grounds that the claims “do not arise out of the same transaction.”

Attorneys for the defendants argued that the garment companies are “differently situated” from one another.

For example, one of the companies, the US-CNMI Development Corp., had argued that “it is differently situated because it is party to an agreement with the US Department of Labor concerning overtime wage issues and is subject to independent monitoring as part of that agreement.”

The defendants also stressed that each plaintiff was employed by only one or two garment companies, and that they were “subject to different employment agreement with different defendants.”

The plaintiffs, the defendants also said, “worked at different time period under different conditions” and “employed in different occupations.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, however, maintained that the claims should be kept in a single action, saying that “severance at this stage in the litigation is premature because the parameters of discovery are not yet known and cooperation among the parties may reduce the burden in individual defendants.”

The plaintiffs, according to their attorneys, should be “afforded an opportunity to establish the common practice allegations in the complaint.”

The plaintiffs tried to establish the alleged common practice based on the garment companies’ “interrelationships” through their membership in the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association or SGMA.

SGMA members, the plaintiffs argued, abide by the same Code of Conduct, and some of them share the same management.

Munson, however, said the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the requirements of a rule that would support a single action.

“For a single transaction or series of transactions to give rise to all of the plaintiffs’ claims in this action,” Munson said, “some confederation, agreement or other charge that defendants acted in concert must be sufficiently alleged in order to support joinder of all defendants in a single action.”

He added, “Simply alleging that defendants engaged in the same conduct is not sufficient to support plaintiffs’ claim, that the same transaction or series of transactions gave rise to all of their claims.”

The class action was filed by 23 unnamed garment workers who have charged their employers with violations of local and federal labor laws, as well as violation of human rights.

Their attorneys said at least 170 garment workers have so far signed in for the class action. (MCM)