10, 2023), the plaintiffs, a group of warehouse employees, filed a collective action alleging that the defendants failed to include bonuses in the regular rate of pay when calculating overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. The plaintiffs filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action consisting of a state-wide group of North Carolina employees. The court held that the plaintiffs could only pursue claims against defendant Smithfield Fresh Meats Corp., their actual employer, and could not pursue claims against the other three defendants as those entities were not the plaintiffs’ “employer” as required by the FLSA. The court noted that similar actions were filed in Illinois against the same defendants, which had subsequently settled, and included North Carolina employees within the collective action in those cases. The court ruled that this case was duplicative of the actions settled in Illinois and that plaintiffs had already been represented in those actions, which had settled, thereby barring their claims. As a result, the court denied the motion for collective action certification. Another example of successfully raising employer status to defeat the plaintiffs’ wage and hour claims is Ayala, et al. v. Nissan North America, Inc., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60506 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 3, 2023). The plaintiffs, a group of mechanics at several different Nissan dealerships, filed a class and collective action alleging that the defendant, Nissan North America, violated various state and federal wage & hour laws. The plaintiffs alleged that Nissan was their joint employer and therefore liable for the FLSA and Florida Minimum Wage Act (FMWA) violations. The plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification of their FMWA claims pursuant to Rule 23 and for conditional certification of a collective action for their FLSA claims, and the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment. The court granted the defendant ’ s motion and denied the plaintiffs’ motion. The plaintiffs contended that mechanics were paid using a flat rate system, which resulted in them being underpaid when the work took longer than the flat rate allowed. The court analyzed the eight-factor test for determining joint employment status and found that the evidence weighed heavily against a finding that Nissan was the mechanics’ joint employer. Factors such as the degree of control, supervision, the right to hire and fire, and the determination of pay rates all indicated that the dealerships, not Nissan, were the primary employers. The court also considered factors like the preparation of payroll and payment of wages, ownership of the work facility, and the nature of the work performed, all of which further supported the conclusion that Nissan was not a joint employer. Accordingly, the court granted the defendant ’ s motion for summary judgment on the basis that it was not the plaintiffs’ joint employer. In Martinez, et al. v. FedEx Ground Package System, Inc., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 193598 (D. N.Mex. Oct. 27, 2023), the plaintiffs, a group of delivery drivers, filed a class action alleging that the defendant misclassified drivers as independent contractors and thereby failed to pay overtime compensation in violation of the New Mexico Minimum Wage Act (NMMWA). The plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification of their NMMWA claims pursuant to Rule 23, which the court ultimately denied. The court determined that individualized assessments regarding each driver ’ s circumstances would be required to litigate the claims, and thus class treatment would be inappropriate. The court opined that the central issue was whether FedEx was the drivers’ joint employer, along with over 100 independent service providers that contracted with FedEx to make deliveries. The court stated that the determination as to whether FedEx was a joint employer with each of the contractors would lead to individual fact-finding trials and would not be an efficient use of the court ’ s time and resources. The court further reasoned that despite alleging that FedEx was a joint employer, the plaintiffs failed to show any common evidence necessary to establish that drivers worked more than 40 hours per week, how they were paid, and evidence that they did not receive overtime wages owed to them. The court also held that the plaintiffs’ offered declarations were insufficient to support a finding that the class members were sufficiently similar in order to certify the plaintiffs’ class claims. Employers also used various other available defenses to defeat or substantially limit plaintiffs’ wage and hour claims over the past year. Cornejo, et al. v. Big Lots Stores, Inc., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94612 (E.D. Cal. May 31, 2023), is an example of the defendant preemptively using arbitration agreements to eviscerate the class claims asserted against it. In that case, the plaintiff filed a class action alleging that the defendant violated various provisions of the California Labor Code, and the defendant filed a motion to deny class certification. The plaintiff sought to represent a class of hourly paid, non-exempt retail
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Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2024
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