Wage and Hour Defense Blog

In Viet v. Le, No. 18-6191, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit provided insight into the kind of evidence employees must present in order to create a jury question over whether they worked unpaid overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

In the case, plaintiff Quoc Viet purchased used copiers in the United States and shipped them to Vietnam for resale by the defendants Victor Le and Copier Victor, Inc.  Copier Victor classified Viet, who worked from his home and a nearby warehouse, as an independent contractor.  Le paid Viet a fixed rate for each copier ...

The new episode of Employment Law This Week features the U.S. Supreme Court's easing of class certification standards in a case against Tyson Foods.

In Iowa, a group of Tyson employees brought a hybrid class and collective action for unpaid overtime spent changing clothes and walking to their work area. An expert determined the average amount of time spent on those activities, and the employees relied on those averages to get class certified and prove liability and damages. On appeal, Tyson argued that the employees should never have been grouped into a single class, because each ...

One of the featured stories on Employment Law This Week – Epstein Becker Green’s new video program – is that there will be no BlackBerry overtime pay for cops in Chicago.

A federal magistrate judge in the Northern District of Illinois ruled that time spent by Chicago police officers actually answering emails on their BlackBerries was work eligible for overtime. However, "monitoring" of their BlackBerries was not work because the officers were still free to use the time predominantly for their own benefit. Regardless, the judge found that the City did not know the employees were ...

In a great many wage-hour complaints alleging unpaid overtime or failure to pay minimum wage, plaintiffs will bring suit without identifying any specific instances in which the plaintiffs ever worked unpaid overtime or worked for a period of time without being paid at least the minimum wage.  The absence of such basic facts plagues many class action and collective action complaints, in particular.  The Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in Landers v Quality Communications rejects the notion that plaintiffs can survive a motion to dismiss by relying on cookie-cutter allegations.  ...

In Holaway v. Stratasys, Inc., the plaintiff was employed as a field service engineer and classified as exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements.  Based on that classification, the plaintiff’s employer did not keep records of his hours worked.

After being discharged, the plaintiff filed lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota claiming he was non-exempt, seeking overtime wages and alleging that he worked sixty hours per week every week of his employment.  The District Court concluded that the plaintiff failed to produce sufficient evidence to show he ...