Quint, et al. v. Vail Resorts, Inc ., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155228 (D. Colo. July 11, 2023). The plaintiffs, a group of employees at Vail Resorts, Inc., filed a class and collective action alleging that the defendant violated the FLSA by failing to pay overtime compensation. The Magistrate Judge recommended bifurcating the state law and FLSA claims, staying the state law claims, and granting the plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification in part. The court denied the plaintiffs’ Rule 23 motion for class certification of the state law claims, as the differences in state law created insurmountable difficulties in managing the class action and make it undesirable to concentrate litigation in the forum. The court, however, opined that the plaintiffs’ offered sufficient evidence that the defendant ’ s snow sports instructors were similarly-situated for purposes of conditional certification as to their FLSA claims. For these reasons, the court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification and denied the motion for class certification of the state law claims. 3. Rulings Denying Or Substantially Limiting Conditional Certification Although the plaintiffs’ bar frequently prevails in obtaining conditional certification, over the past year employers were able to defeat these motions in part by demonstrating the flaws or weaknesses in the evidence submitted by the plaintiffs. These defenses typically concentrate on the declarants’ limited personal knowledge, particularly as it pertains to the existence of uniform policies affecting the members of the proposed collective action. Additionally, employers frequently contest the ability of the plaintiffs’ evidence to show that the proposed collective action membership shares identical job duties, responsibilities, or autonomy. In some instances, employers have successfully challenged conditional certification motions by introducing evidence to refute the plaintiffs’ assertions, or by leveraging settlements from similar cases to obstruct certification as to workers covered by those settlements. Even where defendants have been unable to fully prevent certification, these defenses have been able to limit the scope of collective actions to certain geographic regions or job titles. Finally, the Sixth Circuit ’ s decision in Clark in 2023 also provides an early glimpse into how courts will apply the Sixth Circuit ’ s new, more stringent standard for FLSA conditional certification. Where one or more declarations contain limited personal knowledge, employers may be able to utilize the limitations to prevent conditional certification. Silva, et al. v. Agave Transportation Services, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27781 (D. N.Mex. Feb. 18, 2023), demonstrates how to successfully attack a single plaintiff declaration as lacking sufficient knowledge regarding the applicability of a policy to all putative collective action members. The plaintiff, a truck driver, filed a collective action alleging that the defendant, an oilfield transportation company, failed to pay overtime premiums in violation of the FLSA. The plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the court denied. The plaintiff was paid approximately $20.00 per hour to transport wastewater from oilfields to disposal sites. The plaintiff regularly worked over 40 hours in a workweek, and the plaintiff asserted that the defendant erroneously paid him straight time pay for all hours rather than paying overtime compensation for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. The plaintiff sought to certify a collective action consisting of all hourly paid truck driver employees in New Mexico who did not receive overtime compensation for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. In support of his motion, the plaintiff offered his own declaration in which he asserted that all drivers were similarly-situated because they had the same duties and earned the same pay and that they shared a common employment experience. The plaintiff also provided paystubs showing his rate of pay and hours worked. The defendant argued that the proposed collective action was undefined and that the motion was premature. The court determined that the plaintiff ’ s allegations reasonably defined a putative collective action of similarly-situated employees as far as their job duties were concerned because they all had the same general task of hauling various materials to or from oilfield well sites in New Mexico. However, the court noted that the plaintiff ’ s declaration contained only his alleged personal observations that there were others who were paid in the same manner as he was compensated. The court explained that the plaintiff did not establish whether the drivers reported to a centralized station, drove their trucks to the fields together, stayed at main camps or some other group setting, or whether they had the ability to communicate with each other via radio, cellphone, or other electronic means. Id. at *12-13. The court reasoned that the declaration failed to provide key details that would permit reasonable inferences as to how the plaintiff was aware of the pay of other workers, and lacked the corroboration of any opt-ins or even
15
© Duane Morris LLP 2024
Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2024
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online