Western District enforces class action settlement over defendants’ objections

A circuit court judge properly approved a class action settlement, the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District ruled on December 23, rejecting the defendants’ contentions that the entry of judgment granted relief outside of the pleadings and that the corporate defendant was not bound by the agreement.

In May of 2022, Rebecca Vollmer, individually and on behalf of a class of plaintiffs, filed a petition naming Florence Rainey-Hicks and Hicks Enrichment Resource Outreach Enlightenment Services, LLC (HEROES) as defendants. The petition indicated that the term HEROES referred to both HEROES and Rainey-Hicks when used in the petition.

Vollmer alleged that the class worked for HEROES providing care and services for persons with mental and developmental disabilities but were not paid time-and-a-half when they worked more than 40 hours per week.

The defendants filed a joint answer and a joint stipulation to stay discovery while the parties explored the possibility of a settlement.

In August 2023, the parties participated in mediation, which resulted in a signed one-page document labeled “Settlement Terms Sheet.” The parties mutually agreed that Vollmer would release her claims, that the defendants would not oppose class certification for purposes of settlement, that the settlement class would be an opt-out only class, that a long-form settlement agreement would be forthcoming and that the parties had full authority to enter into the agreement.

The document also included terms regarding payment and interest. A signature was recorded “on behalf of” each party, with each signature distinct.

Vollmer then moved to enforce the parties’ settlement agreement.

The defendants (now represented by new counsel) opposed the motion, but expressly asserted that the parties had signed the settlement agreement.

At a hearing, Rainey-Hicks testified that HEROES was a separate entity and that she signed the settlement sheet for herself but not for HEROES.

The trial court granted Vollmer’s motion to enforce the settlement agreement, and the defendants appealed.

Rainey-Hicks argued that Vollmer’s petition did not contain allegations against her in her individual capacity such that the trial court lacked authority to grant relief on a matter outside of the pleadings. As for HEROES, the company argued that it was not bound by the settlement terms sheet because there was no evidence regarding who signed the agreement on behalf of it.

In a unanimous opinion authored by Judge Thomas N. Chapman and joined by Judges Alok Ahuja and Mark D. Pfeiffer, the court affirmed.

Rainey-Hicks misunderstood the nature of the proceedings before the trial court, the court explained, because the case did not present a scenario in which a trial court granted relief following a trial on the merits of a plaintiff’s claims brought in a petition or tried by consent.

Instead, Vollmer’s motion to enforce “sought specific performance of the settlement agreement rather than requesting that the trial court award relief based on the previously filed petition,” the court wrote. “Accordingly, whether to grant specific performance of the parties’ agreement was an issue that was directly presented to the trial court in the motion to enforce in the action created by the motion to enforce. As this issue was directly presented to the trial court in the action created by the motion to enforce, the trial court did not go beyond the issues raised before it in determining whether to grant the motion to enforce the parties’ agreement.”

Further, the defendants misrepresented the nature of Vollmer’s petition, the court added, which clearly named Rainey-Hicks as a defendant and sought relief against her. The defendants even recognized this, as demonstrated by defense counsel’s questions at the hearing.

Turning to HEROES, the court pointed out that its position was directly contrary to the position it took in its response to the motion to enforce, where the defendants expressly acknowledged that the parties signed a settlement terms sheet.

“In this matter, after being informed of the signed document that Plaintiffs sought to enforce and having been presented with a copy of that document, Defendants raised no defenses based on the execution of the document and instead took the express position that the parties had signed the agreement,” the court said. “Thereafter, Defendants sought to extend the litigation based on a fact they had previously recognized was not in dispute. After representing to the trial court that the parties had signed the agreement in a paper filed with the court (which essentially served as Defendants’ responsive pleading to the motion to enforce), Defendants are not permitted on appeal to assert the position that the parties had not signed the agreement.”

The court also awarded Vollmer attorney’s fees and costs on appeal, although it remanded to the trial court with instructions to determine the reasonableness of the amount requested and enter an appropriate award.

Columbia attorney Clark L. Jones of Jones Powell and Stevens, who represented Rainey-Hicks and HEROES, did not respond to a request for comment on the decision.

Neither did Anthony J. Meyer of Meyer Moody in Columbia, who represented Vollmer.

The case is Vollmer v. Hicks Enrichment Resource Outreach Enlightenment Services, LLC, No. WD87747.