Management victory.

Management side attorneys in wage-and-hour disputes-scored a victory this week when the Central District of California Western Division declined to certify a class action against Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The court denied certification to three Wal-Mart assistant managers who sought to be representatives for 2,700 employees with comparable jobs in California.

Wage-and-hour classes have been less frequently certified since they were moved to the federal courts, along with some other mass-tort litigation as a result of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. But the wage-and-hour battlefield--fueled in part by cases involving undocumented workers--is rife with class action cases.

Employers are anxious to head off the multi-plaintiff cases, which can potentially result in judgments of hundreds of millions of dollars if the company loses in trial. The threat has driven several settlements of tens of millions of dollars, especially following a recent verdict against Wal-Mart for more than $170 million.

Larry DiNardo, an attorney for Chicago's Jones Day LLP who led the Wal-Mart team in this case called the ruling "a dramatic break."

"There was too much variation in the way people in this job described how they did their jobs," he said. "It's not right to have a representative class action [in this case]. An individual's work performance has to be considered separately."

The plaintiffs in this case were claiming that they were unlawfully denied overtime because they were wrongly classified as managers, who are exempt from overtime. A decision on whether the workers were indeed managers would require research into the requirements of each individual's job and how they filled their workday, the court said. Three individuals in this case could not front a class action case because it would be virtually impossible to examine the way 2,700 employees did their jobs.