Monday, November 8, 2010

Court certifies lawsuit against Swift short paying drivers as class action

PHOENIX, AZ -- A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that a lawsuit accusing Swift Transportation Corp. of routinely shorting its drivers in pay will move forward as a class action after a long and circuitous route through the Arizona court system.

The case claims that rather than paying drivers on actual miles driven, the company calculates mileage using a software program. The suit claims that in doing so, the program, on average, underpays drivers by 7 percent to 10 percent. According to court documents, Swift Transportation's manager of contract finance from 1998 until 2002 admitted the software consistently underreported the mileage that drivers actually log by an average of 6 percent.