right to communicate with potential class members” and “there is nothing improper about [an employer] gathering facts to support its defense.” Id. at 1366. Without question, then, there is no mandatory, across-the-board prohibition against employer contact with prospective class members in an FLSA collective action at the pre-certification stage. As a general matter, employers are free to communicate with unrepresented prospective class members about the lawsuit and even to solicit affidavits from them concerning the subject matter of the suit. Notwithstanding the foregoing, district courts are empowered with relatively broad discretion to limit communications between parties and putative class members. See Kleiner v. First Nat’l Bank of Atlanta, 751 F.2d 1193, 1201-03 (11th Cir. 1985) (<HOLDING>); Jones v. Casey’s General Stores, 517
holding that a class plaintiff who seeks to assert statutory rights to protect a class of which he is a member is not asserting rights antagonistic to any members of that class recognizing a narrow class of cases in which the termination of the class representatives claim for relief does not moot the claims of the class members holding that a class could not be certified because the definition made class members impossible to identify prior to individualized factfinding and litigation and thereby failed to satisfy one of the basic requirements for a class action under rule 23 recognizing cause of action by class member against class counsel for negligence in providing notice recognizing district courts authority to police class member contacts and to prohibit defendant from engaging in unsupervised unilateral communications with plaintiff class members to solicit exclusion requests from rule 23 class