Last Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its keenly anticipated decision in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, another in its recent run of class action cases. Siding 6-2 with the plaintiffs-respondents, the majority held that the employees at one Tyson pork processing plant could extrapolate how much overtime class members had worked from statistical evidence estimating how long it took an “average” employee to “don and doff” protective gear. In other words, the Court agreed that the plaintiffs could use inferences drawn from “representative sampling” methods to smooth over employee-specific differences—even though such variations directly impacted whether Tyson was liable to any given class member for overtime pay.

Tyson Foods begs to be read in dialogue with the Court’s landmark decision in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, in which the late Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the use of representative sampling in class actions at the expense of a defendant’s right to litigate individualized defenses to liability. Does the Tyson Foods holding mark a departure from recent precedent, including Wal-Mart’s critique of “Trial by Formula”? And could this ruling have broader implications for class actions in other areas of the law, particularly consumer fraud and false advertising cases?Continue Reading Down Goes Tyson: What Does Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo Mean for Consumer Class Actions?