PITTSBURGH (LN) — U.S. District Judge Robert Colville on Monday severed the claims of nearly 14,300 plaintiffs across three lawsuits against FedEx, ordering the plaintiffs to refile their individual actions in appropriate forums within 60 days and rejecting their request that the court handle the transfer.
The ruling in the Western District of Pennsylvania targets three cases—Brannon, Abner, and Smith—that Colville described as "spinoffs" from a prior seven-year litigation, Claiborne, which involved over 30,000 conditional collective members.
Colville found that the plaintiffs were misjoined under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20 because their claims did not arise transaction or occurrence and would require distinct evidentiary proof.
The court noted that the Abner case alone contained 11,643 named plaintiffs, while Brannon involved nearly 400 and Smith involved 2,253.
Colville wrote that the plaintiffs filed these mass actions as a "tactical maneuver around the standard class or collective action procedures," citing Third Circuit precedent describing such suits as "class actions in disguise."
The plaintiffs had previously acknowledged in the Claiborne litigation that individualized issues prevented them from proceeding on a class or collective basis after voluntarily decertifying their collective.
Despite the misjoinder finding, Colville denied the plaintiffs' request that the court transfer the severed claims to other jurisdictions.
He ruled that such a transfer would impose a "massive administrative burden on the Court and the Clerk’s Office" that was not justified.
Instead, the judge accepted the plaintiffs' offer to file their individual claims themselves, a remedy he found consistent with Third Circuit precedent.
Colville rejected the plaintiffs' proposed 120-day deadline for refiling, calling it excessive given the months of notice they had received.
He set a strict 60-day deadline for the plaintiffs to file their individual lawsuits and pay filing fees, warning that claims not filed by that date would be time-barred.
The judge also clarified that because the claims are being severed rather than dismissed, the statute of limitations remains tolled, but the plaintiffs proceed at their own peril if they attempt to file further mass actions.
FedEx had opposed the transfer request, arguing that the plaintiffs should bear the cost and effort of refiling the thousands of cases.
The order marks a significant procedural victory for employment defense counsel facing similar mass-action tactics, as it prevents plaintiffs from using the court system to aggregate thousands of unrelated individual claims.
Colville’s ruling follows similar severance orders he issued in April 2025 in the Claiborne and Atwood cases, which involved 12 and two plaintiffs respectively.
The three cases being severed today were consolidated for briefing purposes because they involved substantively identical arguments regarding misjoinder.
Plaintiffs’ counsel, Lichten & Liss-Riordan P.C., represented the plaintiffs in all five related lawsuits pending in the district.
Colville noted that the law firm’s familiarity with the litigation and the substantive identity of the issues allowed him to address the misjoinder questions in tandem.
The judge emphasized that the plaintiffs could not seek a benefit from the court simply because they filed improper mass actions after voluntarily decertifying their collective.
He stated that any suggestion that the court could hold a trial involving hundreds or thousands of plaintiffs when individual issues predominated was "patently untenable."
The order directs the plaintiffs to file their severed claims in appropriate forums consistent with their state of employment.
Colville will mark the cases as closed once the severance is complete, consistent with his prior orders litigation.
The ruling leaves open the question of whether the plaintiffs will comply with the 60-day deadline or face dismissal of their time-barred claims.
FedEx appears prepared to raise law of the case and collateral estoppel issues if the plaintiffs attempt to relitigate the misjoinder determination in other forums.