Background
Plaintiffs Adrian Evans and Kenneth Hicks, Paterson firefighters and members of the Paterson Firefighters Association, filed a class action complaint in July 2023 alleging that the City of Paterson’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) violated the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law (NJWHL), N.J.S.A. 34:11-56a1 to -56a41. The CBA set a work schedule of alternating 24-hours-on and 72-hours-off shifts, and its overtime formula — calculated by dividing biweekly gross pay by 168 hours — allegedly paid firefighters at a rate below the statutory requirement for hours worked in excess of forty per week. Plaintiffs claimed they routinely worked over forty hours weekly without receiving NJWHL-compliant overtime compensation.
This case had a prior chapter: the City moved to dismiss and compel arbitration, arguing plaintiffs had to exhaust CBA grievance procedures before filing suit. The trial court agreed, but in Evans I (App. Div. Jan. 28, 2025), the Appellate Division reversed, holding that plaintiffs were not required to exhaust administrative remedies because their NJWHL claim raised legal issues for the court, not contractual disputes for an arbitrator. Following remand, the City answered and plaintiffs moved for class certification. The proposed class was defined as all Paterson firefighters, captains, and battalion chiefs employed from July 2017 to the present whose primary responsibility was firefighting duties.
The trial court granted certification without formal discovery, finding that the City’s failure to respond to plaintiffs’ Requests for Admissions — including an admission that more than forty firefighters had been employed since 2017 — satisfied numerosity as a matter of admitted fact, and that typicality, commonality, and adequacy of representation were satisfied on the face of the complaint and the CBA itself. The City appealed the certification order and the denial of its motion for reconsideration.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Division affirmed across the board, applying an abuse-of-discretion standard to the class certification decision. On the City’s argument that certification was premature because no formal discovery had been taken, the panel reiterated the rule from Myska v. New Jersey Mfrs. Ins. Co., 440 N.J. Super. 458 (App. Div. 2015): New Jersey does not impose a bright-line rule that discovery must precede class certification. The question is whether the nature of the claims and the record support certification, not the procedural stage of the case. Here, plaintiffs’ NJWHL claims arose from the uniform CBA terms applicable to all class members — a common-policy structure that lent itself to class treatment without individualized factual inquiry.
On numerosity, the court held the City’s failure to answer Request for Admission No. 3 — that the City employed more than forty firefighters in the Paterson Fire Division since 2017 — was dispositive. Under Rule 4:22-1, unanswered requests are deemed admitted, and forty-plus members easily satisfies the numerosity threshold under New Jersey law (drawing on the federal guidance that classes of forty or more are generally sufficient). The City offered no showing of what additional discovery would add on the numerosity question.
As to typicality, adequacy, commonality, predominance, and superiority, the panel agreed the trial court did not abuse its discretion. The two central questions — whether the City was required to pay NJWHL overtime for hours worked beyond forty per week, and whether it actually did so — were common to every class member. The only differences concerned the quantum of individual damages, which does not defeat commonality or predominance. On the City’s argument that captains and battalion chiefs should be excluded as exempt executive employees, the court held this argument was improperly raised for the first time in a reconsideration reply brief and was therefore not preserved; the issue could be raised as a defense on the merits at a later stage.
Key Takeaways
- New Jersey does not require pre-certification discovery as a categorical rule; courts assess whether the nature of the claims and available evidence support class treatment, not merely the litigation’s procedural stage.
- A municipality’s failure to respond to Requests for Admissions is a powerful tool in class litigation — unanswered admissions under Rule 4:22-1 can satisfy the numerosity prerequisite without further proof.
- Arguments raised for the first time in a reconsideration reply brief are waived and will not be addressed on the merits, either by the trial court or on appeal — a critical procedural lesson for municipal defendants opposing class certification.
Why It Matters
This decision is significant for NJ public-sector employment litigation on two levels. First, it confirms that municipal employers are not insulated from NJWHL wage claims simply by virtue of CBA provisions addressing overtime — statutory rights under the NJWHL are not displaced by collective bargaining. That principle was established in Evans I; this decision confirms it remains the law of the case going forward to the merits. Second, the ruling demonstrates how procedural inattentiveness — specifically, failing to respond to requests for admissions — can foreclose arguments on key class-certification elements before a defendant even has a chance to litigate the merits.
For plaintiffs’ practitioners handling wage-and-hour claims against public employers or other large institutional defendants, Evans underscores the value of early, targeted discovery requests designed to lock in class-size admissions. For defense counsel, it is a reminder that discovery management in class cases must begin the moment the complaint is filed — not after an adverse class-certification ruling prompts a scramble to raise new arguments on reconsideration.