Misclassification Claims for Plaintiff’s Counsel: Which Files to Take and What They Are Worth

Don J. Foty, Founding Partner | Foty Law Group (formerly Hodges & Foty, LLP)

Don J. Foty is the Founding Partner of Foty Law Group in Houston, Texas, a trial and appellate firm devoted to representing workers in wage and hour class and collective actions nationwide. Over roughly two decades of practice, Mr. Foty has served as class counsel in more than 100 wage and hour class and collective actions and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts for employees. His practice covers the full spectrum of Fair Labor Standards Act and state wage law claims — overtime exemption misclassification, independent contractor misclassification, regular rate miscalculation, tip credit violations, off-the-clock work, fluctuating workweek abuses, unpaid meal periods, and uncompensated pre- and post-shift screening, waiting, and travel time — giving him a front-line view of which misclassification files are worth taking and how to value them.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Foty earned his J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center, where he competed on the Mock Trial Team, served on the Journal of Texas Consumer Law, worked as a student attorney in the Consumer Law Clinic, and clerked for the Office of the Attorney General of Texas and the City of Houston Legal Department’s Business Litigation Division. He earned his B.B.A. in Finance from The University of Texas at Austin, where he was admitted to the McCombs Business Honors Program. He is admitted to the State Bar of Texas; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Seventh Circuits; the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; and more than a dozen federal district courts, including the Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western Districts of Texas and federal courts in Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Foty has been recognized as a Texas Super Lawyer by Texas Monthly and Thomson Reuters, named to the National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Civil Trial Lawyers and the National Advocates’ Top 100 Employment Attorneys, selected as one of Houston’s Top Lawyers by Houstonia Magazine, and inducted into the Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Earlier in his career he was named to the National Trial Lawyers’ Top 40 Under 40 and recognized by Texas Monthly as a Top Young Lawyer. Federal courts have repeatedly commended his work: in Sandras v. Expeditors & Production Service Co. (W.D. La. 2019) the court praised class counsel’s skill, reputation, and record of success in FLSA litigation, and in Swamy v. Title Source, Inc. (N.D. Cal. 2018) the court noted that counsel had vigorously prosecuted the California class action. The Mayor of Lancaster, California, formally commended him for excellence in trial advocacy in securing equitable relief for his clients. He is regularly interviewed by local and national news organizations on civil justice issues, and several of his cases have drawn national media coverage.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Foty is a member of the College of the State Bar of Texas, the American Bar Association, the American Association for Justice, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, and the Houston Trial Lawyers Association. He is a frequent author and faculty member on wage and hour law. His articles for The Houston Lawyer include analyses of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt and the salary basis test for overtime exemptions (2023), textualism in the Hewitt litigation (2022), and the Fifth Circuit’s Swales decision on FLSA collective certification (2021), and he has written on wage and hour topics for the American Bar Association and the Houston Bar Association. His Houston Bar Association presentations include “The Loper Bright Decision and Its Impact on the FLSA” (2024), “Collective Actions Under the FLSA After Swales” (2021), and “Current Trends and Hot Topics Under the Fair Labor Standards Act” (2015).

• Experience

Mr. Foty has built one of the country’s most active plaintiff-side wage and hour practices, prosecuting class and collective actions against some of the nation’s largest employers across the restaurant, oil and gas, healthcare, logistics, and retail industries. In the past year alone he secured two unanimous state supreme court victories for workers against Amazon: Malloy v. Amazon.com Services, LLC (Nev. 2025) and Johnson v. Amazon.com Services, LLC (Ill. 2026), in which the Illinois Supreme Court held that Illinois wage law protects employees’ pre- and post-shift time more broadly than the FLSA. His wage and hour settlements include more than twenty class and collective resolutions ranging from $1.1 million to $11 million, and his trial record includes a $10.7 million jury verdict and a $1.8 million medical malpractice verdict. Having evaluated, filed, certified, tried, and settled hundreds of wage claims — and having written extensively on the exemption and collective-certification issues at the heart of Hewitt and Swales — Mr. Foty is uniquely positioned to show plaintiff’s counsel how to screen misclassification files, spot the fact patterns that drive liability, and realistically value what a case is worth.

Matthew S. Parmet, Founder & Managing Attorney | Parmet PC

Matt Parmet is the Founder and Managing Attorney of Parmet PC in Houston, Texas, a firm dedicated exclusively to recovering unpaid wages for workers through class and collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act and state wage laws. For his entire legal career — more than sixteen years — Mr. Parmet has fought on behalf of employees, recovering unpaid wages for thousands of workers in hundreds of matters across more than forty states. He represents workers in airlines, oil and gas, construction, welding, healthcare, food service, insurance, finance, retail, manufacturing, and other industries, and his cases routinely turn on the misclassification issues at the center of this program: employees wrongly labeled independent contractors, day-rate and salaried workers wrongly treated as exempt, and employers who miscalculate the overtime owed once the misclassification is undone.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Parmet earned his J.D. from Tulane University School of Law and his B.A., with Honors, from The University of Texas at Austin, where he studied Psychology and Spanish and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He is fluent in Spanish, which he uses to represent Spanish-speaking workers directly. Mr. Parmet is licensed by the state bars and supreme courts of Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania, and is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits, and forty U.S. District Courts nationwide — a footprint that reflects the truly national scope of his wage and hour practice.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Parmet has been selected to the Texas Super Lawyers list for 2025 and 2026 after seven consecutive years on the Texas Rising Stars list (2018–2024). In 2025, he received a formal Commendation for Trial Advocacy from the City of Lancaster, California, presented by Mayor R. Rex Parris, for litigating and settling Boone v. Amazon.com Services, LLC, a class action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. As founder of a firm that has grown into a national wage theft practice, he leads the firm’s case evaluation, litigation strategy, and settlement negotiations, deciding which files to take and how to value them.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Parmet is an active member of the National Employment Lawyers Association, the Texas Employment Lawyers Association, the California Employment Lawyers Association, the American Association for Justice, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, and the Houston Trial Lawyers Association. Through these organizations he collaborates with plaintiff-side employment lawyers across the country on developments in FLSA collective action procedure, state wage law, and the independent contractor and exemption tests that define misclassification litigation.

• Experience

Before founding Parmet PC, Mr. Parmet practiced at Bruckner Burch PLLC, one of the nation’s most prominent plaintiff-side wage and hour firms, where he litigated FLSA collective actions against major employers nationwide. He previously handled complex litigation at Sico White Hoelscher Harris & Braugh LLP and Doyle Raizner LLP in Houston. Over his career he has taken wage cases from intake through certification, decertification battles, trial preparation, and settlement, and has built a practice on contingency — meaning every file he accepts has to be worth the investment. That daily discipline of screening, pricing, and prosecuting misclassification claims makes Mr. Parmet uniquely positioned to help plaintiff’s counsel identify which misclassification files to take and what those cases are truly worth.

SESSION 1 – Screening Exempt-Status Claims: Which Duties Evidence Wins and Which Loses | Don J. Foty & Matthew S. Parmet | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This session equips plaintiff’s employment counsel with a practical framework for screening FLSA exempt-status misclassification claims, focusing on executive, administrative, HCE, and outside sales exemptions. Attorneys will learn which categories of duties evidence create winning files, which fact patterns signal a case to decline, and how the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in E.M.D. Sales v. Carrera and the restored $684/week salary threshold reshape the intake calculus. Attendees will leave with a concrete checklist for evaluating exempt-status claims at the intake stage and a circuit-by-circuit sense of where cases are most viable.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – What Misclassification Claims Are Worth: Damages Models and the Records That Prove Them | Don J. Foty & Matthew S. Parmet | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This session equips plaintiff’s counsel with the analytical tools to value misclassification claims accurately before accepting a file. Attorneys will learn how to construct and defend damages models under the FLSA and applicable state law, identify the records that drive or sink those models, and apply the Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery burden-shifting doctrine when employer records are inadequate. By the end of this session, attendees will be able to calculate back pay under competing methodologies, layer state-law penalties onto federal exposure, and identify the most common damages-modeling errors that leave money on the table.