John Dudrey and Bryan Hawkins Quoted on Overtime, Joint Employer Issues in Kronos Hack Suits

In a new article, John Dudrey and Bryan Hawkins offer their insights to Law360’s Employment Authority on how overtime lawsuits filed by employees after a ransomware attack on workforce management company Kronos may be resolved.

Since the discovery of the incident, workers have filed more than 20 lawsuits against employers, many of them proposed Fair Labor Standards Act class actions in federal court, with several suits also naming Kronos as a defendant.

“These are bellwether cases,” Dudrey said, “certainly on the narrow question of employers’ responsibility for things like unpaid wages in the event of a cyberattack, but also more broadly about employers’ liability when they’re struck by essentially acts of God that are outside their control.”

Employers’ attorneys say that though they doubt the suits also naming Kronos will hold up to scrutiny, employers named in the suits could also bring in Kronos to try, according to Hawkins, “to spread the wealth, so to speak, in terms of liability and exposure.”