Brant Casavant
Attorney
Brant has spent his career representing workers in class action lawsuits and in individual cases involving claims for disability and sexual orientation discrimination, retaliation, and failure to pay wages. Prior to joining Fair Work, he was a senior associate at one of New England’s leading employee-side class action firms, where he worked on cases involving tips and service charges, unpaid overtime, and the misclassification of exotic dancers and cleaning workers as independent contractors.
Brant has worked on several groundbreaking cases challenging systemic wage abuses in the exotic dancing industry, improper sharing and distribution of tips and gratuities at restaurants and coffee shops, misclassification of cleaning workers as independent contractors, and failure to pay overtime. In addition to his class action work, Brant has successfully resolved individual cases involving claims for discrimination and retaliation.
Brant has pursued cases in state and federal courts and in private arbitration and has authored briefs in a number of cases for appellate courts, including the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the Hawaii Supreme Court, and the United States First Circuit, Second Circuit, and Third Circuit Courts of Appeals. Several of these cases have resulted in landmark decisions, such as rulings that managerial shift supervisors could not participate in tip pools with baristas at an international coffee shop chain and that service employees in Hawaii had the right to recover unpaid service charges from the hotels where they worked.
Northeastern University School of Law
J.D. - 2008
Northeastern University
A.B. - 2003
Cunha v. Avis Budget Car Rental, LLC, 221 F. Supp. 3d 178 (D. Mass. 2016) (conditionally certifying FLSA collective action and authorizing notice to "damage managers")
Carpaneda v. Domino's Pizza, Inc., 89 F. Supp. 3d 219 (D. Mass. 2015) (awarding $41,000 in attorneys' fees after plaintiff accepted $19,500 offer from defendant)
Travers v. Flight Services & Systems, Inc., 737 F.3d 144 (1st Cir. 2013) (reversing federal trial court's decision dismissing skycap retaliation case)
Binienda v. Atwells Realty Corp., 2018 WL 6266784 (D.R.I. 2018) (approving $35,000 settlement — three times her estimated damages — for former adult entertainer)
Goldberg v. EF Education First, Inc., 34 Mass. L. Rptr. 399 (2017) (certifying class action of tour consultants on claim for unpaid overtime)
Sutton v. Jordan's Furniture, Inc., 493 Mass. 728 (2024) (affirming $8.8 million judgment for unpaid overtime and premium pay on behalf of commission-based salespeople)
Sutton v. Jordan's Furniture, Inc., Middlesex Case No. 1981CV01763 (Mass. Super. Dec. 21, 2020) (certifying class action of sales employees on claim for unpaid overtime and Sunday premium pay)
Reilly v. The Convertible Castle, Inc., d/b/a Bernie & Phyl's Furniture, Bristol Case No. 1973CV00449 (Dec. 24, 2020) (certifying class action of sales employees on claim for unpaid overtime and Sunday premium pay)
Weiss v. Loomis, Sayles & Co., Inc., 97 Mass. App. Ct. 1 (2020) (vacating directed verdict against plaintiff on claim that he was misclassified as an independent contractor)
Cairo v. Starbucks Corp., 2013 WL 5229968 (D. Mass. Sept. 13, 2013) (successfully opposing summary judgment on barista's claim failure to accommodate)
Oliveira v. Table Talk Pies, Inc., Middlesex Case No. 2085CV00518 (Mass. Super. July 6, 2023) (summary judgment for plaintiff's favor on claim that employer improperly rounded employees' start and stop times at work)
Litigating Wage and Hour Class Actions: Hybrid Actions
ABA Labor and Employment Law, 3rd Annual CLE Conference
Speaker on panel concerning independent contractor misclassification, Boston Bar Association, October, 2017 to 2017
Speaker concerning changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act, and other wage and hour developments, Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, December, 2016 to 2016
Massachusetts
District of Massachusetts
United States Court of Appeals - First Circuit
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