Los Angeles attorney Dennis Moss filed two class actions against Tuesday Morning in 2002 and got them certified, but later court action granted the company’s petition to decertify the cases.

Moss appealed and lost. Now, his son Ari has filed about 40 individual lawsuits for about half the 80 plaintiffs, saying court testimony indicates the cases should be tried separately because the circumstances in each case are different.

More lawsuits are pending.

“Employers come to California, want to make as much money as possible and will do anything they can to circumvent the law,” Ari Moss said. “Therefore, they call people managers when they truly are not managers. These so-called managers can hire and fire people, but it may be only once every two weeks. The rest of the time, they check people out of the store, stock the shelves and do what they’re told by the company. That’s not really a manager. Under California law, you need to spend more than 50 percent of your time in managerial duties in order to be paid as a manager.”

More employees are ready to sue in the current economic climate, too.

Workers pushed to complete a job might have qualified for overtime but overlooked it — or neglected to say anything due to fear of losing their jobs, lawyers say. Now, continued pressure on the job or an unemployed spouse might have changed the dynamic.

“Now, it’s ‘Gosh, I was entitled to the money, and I kinda overlooked it,’ ” Perez said.

“I do think the average worker is becoming desperate and that translates to more lawsuits,” said Jennifer Randlett Madden, a labor and employment lawyer at Downey Brand.

Another Route for Workers

Complaints to the state, another route for workers who think they haven’t been paid for the extra hours they worked, buck the trend. They went down last year.

A total of 157 overtime complaints were filed with the state by workers in the four-county Sacramento region in 2009. That’s down 13 percent from 183 in 2008, according to figures from the California Department of Industrial Relations,

The numbers are down statewide, too. A total of 7,847 overtime complaints were filed in 2009, down 8.6 percent from 8,588 in 2008.

Workers are not required to file a complaint with the state before going to an attorney and heading to court; lawyers don’t have to file with the state either, DIR spokeswoman Erika Monterroza said.

“Workers can get relief without hiring a lawyer,” she said, by filing a complaint with the state where they’ll get it investigated for free.