McDonald's recently settled a class-action lawsuit that claims the fast-food chain failed to give former employees proper notice of their right to continued health insurance coverage under COBRA.
In the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the plaintiffs claimed that McDonald's unlawfully omitted required information from its COBRA notices and provided only some details haphazardly across several letters. The company did not use the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL's) model COBRA notice. This "caused plaintiff economic injuries in the form of lost health insurance and unpaid medical bills, as well as informational injuries," the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit also alleged that McDonald's wanted to save money by discouraging people from selecting COBRA coverage. McDonalds did not respond to a request for comment.
The amount of the settlement is expected to be included in a motion that's due on Aug. 26.
Growing Legal Action
"We have been seeing a steady uptick in COBRA class-action lawsuits, alleging violations of COBRA election notices," said Christine Keller, Ed Meehan and Mark Nielsen, attorneys with Groom Law Group in Washington, D.C., in a joint e-mail. "These are brought by a handful of plaintiffs' law firms with new firms joining the field."
"There has been an uptick over the last few years in cases challenging the adequacy of COBRA notices, some of which actually claim that the notices were inadequate, even when they followed...
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