A recent report from job recruiter RedBalloon details the surge of lawsuits taking place at the workplace.
According to the 2024 Carlton Fields Class Action Survey, labor-related class-action lawsuits against employers jumped from 25.6% in 2021 to 43.4% in 2023.
“These numbers show the growing threat of workplace litigation as a key challenge facing employers in the 2024 labor market,” said RedBalloon CEO Andrew Crapuchettes.
Additionally, workplace lawsuits increased 50% from 2022 to 2023, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the biggest age group filing suits against their employer was Gen Z.
RedBalloon says in its Freedom Economy survey of 80,000 small business owners, 57.4% of employers said that Gen Z was the most likely to pose a risk of a workplace lawsuit.
RedBalloon’s report highlights the view pro-business groups have been pushing when it comes to legal tort reform.
The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) said they saw a rise in frivolous suits against employers taking place during the covid pandemic in 2020.
Thousands of lawsuits related to COVID-19 were filed that year. States like Florida had to jump in to pass adequate lawsuit protections because lawyers were suing companies for not practicing “COVID-19 liability protections” for schools, businesses, manufacturers of personal protective equipment, and healthcare workers, among other areas.
The ATRA said the lawsuits were so bad in many of these states, they called them “The Judicial Hellholes” of the civil justice system.
“It explains the increase in artificially inflated damage amounts, called phantom damages, spurred by medical finance companies and trial lawyers issuing letters of protection to medical providers as a sort of “insurance” that they’ll be paid after a personal injury trial,” said the ATRA.
Polls have shown business groups support tort reform to help keep costs down for consumers.
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